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MODERN 

ENGLISH BOOKS OF 

POWER 




■(i^S> 




MODERN 

ENGLISH BOOKS 

OF POWER 

By GEORGE HAMLIN FITCH 

**A Good Book Is the Precious 
Life-Blood of a Master Spirit, Embalmed and Treasured 
Up on Purpose to a Life Beyond Life." 
Milton: Arhofagitica 



ILLUSTRATED 



PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS, SAN FRANCISCO 



Copyright, is^z T7^A*L I 

iy Paul Elder and Company "^ ^ ' 

... .Fr 

The articles in this 

book appeared originally in the 

Sunday book-page of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The privilege of reproducing them 

here is due to the courtesy of 

M. H. de Young, Esq. 



f^ 



TO AMERIQUE 

WHOSE 

LOVE AND ENCOURAGEMENT 

HELPED ME TO WRITE 

THIS BOOK 



Contents 

Introduction 



The Vital Quality in Literature .... xi 

To Get the Spiritual Essence of a Great Book One Must 
Study the Man Who Wrote It— The Man Is the Best 
Epitome of His Message. 

Macaulay's Essays in European History . . 3 
Foremost English Essayist — His Style and Learning Have 
Made Macaulay a Favorite for Over a Half Century. 

Scott and His Waverley Novels .... 11 

Greatest Novelist the World Has Known — Made History 
Real and Created Charafters That Will Never Die. 

Carlyle as an Inspirer of Youth .... 20 
Finest English Prose Writer— His Best Books, Past and 
Present, Sartor Resartus and the French Revolution. 

De Quincey as a Master of Style . . . . 30 

He Wrote the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater— 
Dreamed Dreams and Sawr Visions and Pi£tured Them 
in Poetic Prose. 

Charles Lamb and the Essays of Elia . . . 38 

Best Beloved of All the English Writers— Quaintest and 
Tcnderest Essayist Whose Work Appeals to All Hearts. 

Dickens, the Foremost of Novelists ... 47 

More Widely Read Than Any Other Story -Tellcr-The 
Greatest of the Modem Humorists Appeals to the 
Readers of All Ages and Classes. 

Thackeray, Greatest Master of Fiction , . 56 

The Most Accomplished Writer of His Century— Tender 
Pathos Under an Affeftation of Cynicism and Great 
Art in Style and Charafters. 



[V] 



Contents 

Page 

Charlotte Bronte; Her Two Great Novels 66 

Jane Eyre and Villette are Touched With Genius— The 
Tragedy of a Woman's Life That Resulted in Two 
Stories of Passionate Revolt Against Fate. 

George Eliot and Her Two Great Novels . 76 

Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss— Her Early Stories 
Are Rich in Charadler Sketches, With Much Humor 
and Pathos. 

RusKiN, THE Apostle of Art 87 

Art Critic and Social Reformer— Best Books Are Modern 
Painters, The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. 

Tennyson Leads the Victorian Writers . . 96 

A Poet Who Voiced the Aspirations of His Age—Locksley 
Hall, In Memorian and The Idylls of the King Among 
His Best Works. 
Browning, Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare . 106 

How to Get the Best of Browning's Poems — Read the 
Lyrics First and Then Take Up the Longer and the 
More Difficult Works. 
Meredith and a Few of His Best Novels . .115 

One of the Greatest Masters of Fidlion of the Last Cen- 
tury— T^tf Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Diana of the 
Crosstuays and Other Novels. 

Stevenson, Prince of Modern Story- Tellers 123 

His Stories of Adventure and Brilliant 'S.^^zyt— Treasure 
Island and Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde His Most Poo- 
ular Books. 
Thomas Hardy; His Tragic Tales of Wessex i 3 1 

Greatest Living Writer of English Fiftion— Resenting Harsh 
Criticisms, the Prose Master Turns to Verse. 

Kipling's Best Short Stories and Poems . .140 

Tales of East Indian Life and Character— Ideal Training 
of the Genius That Has Produced Some of the Best 
Literary Work of Our Day. 

Bibliography 151 

Short Notes of Both Standard and Other Editions, With 
Lives, Sketches and Reminiscences. 
Index 165 



[vi] 



Illustrations 

Facing 
Page 

Charles Dickens Reading The Chimes at 58 Lincoln's Inn 
Fields on the Second of December, 1 844. From a Sketch 
by Daniel Maclise, R. A Title v' 

Thomas Babington Macaulay at the Age of Forty-nine— After 
an Engraving by W. Holl, from a Drawing by George 
Richmond, A. R. A 6 "^ 

Sir Walter Scott— This Portrait is taken from Chantrey's 

Bust now at Abbotsford, which, according to Lockhart, 

**Alone Preserves for Posterity the Expression most fondly 

Remembered by All who Ever Mingled in his Domestic 

Circle." . . . i% ^ 

White Horse Inn— From an Illustration to Wa'verley^ Drawn 

by G. Cattermole and Engraved by E. Finden . . . 14; 

Thomas Car lyle— From the World-Famed Masterpiece of 

Portraiture by James McNeill Whistler . . . . 20 • 

Archhouse, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, the Birthplace of 
Thomas Carlyle— From a Photograph in the Possession of 
Alexander Carlyle, M. A., on which Carlyle has Written 
a Memorandum to Show in which Room he was Born . 26 

Thomas De Quincey— From an old Engraving . . . 30 

De Quincey with Two Daughters and Grandchild— From a 

Chalk Drawing by James Archer, R. S. A., made in 1855 34- 

Charles Lamb— From the Portrait by William Hazlitt . 38 . 

Mary and Charles Lamb— From the Painting by F. S. Cary 

made in 1834 44 

Charles Dickens at the Age of Twenty-seven- From the 

Portrait by Daniel Maclise, R. A 48 

Original Pickwick Cover Issued in 1 837 with Dickens' Auto- 
graph—Most of Dickens' Novels were Issued in Shilling 
Installments before being Published in the Complete Volume 5 2 

William Makepeace Thackeray— From a Drawmg by Samuel 

Laurence, Engraved by J. C. Armytage . . . . 56 

Title-page to Vanity Fair^ Drawn by Thackeray, who Fur- 
nished the Illustrations for Many of his Earlier Editions 58 



[vii] 



Illustrations facing 

Page 
William Makepeace Thackeray— A Caricature Drawn by 

Himself 62 

Charlotte Bronte— From the Exquisitely Sympathetic Crayon 
Portrait by George Richmond, R. A. , now in the National 
Portrait Gallery of London 66 

Mrs. Gaskell— From the Portrait by George Richmond, R. A. 
Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Bronte is one of the Finest Biog- 
raphies in the Language 71 

George Eliot in 1 864— From the Etching by Mr. Paul Rajon— 
Drawn by Mr. Frederick Burton— From the Frontispiece 
to the First Edition of George Eliot' s Life, by Her Hus- 
band, J. W. Cross 76 

George Eliot's Birthplace, South Farm, Arbury, Nuneaton. 80 

John Ruskin— From a Photograph Taken on July 20,1882, 

by Messrs. Elliott & Fry 88 

John Ruskin— From the Semi-Romantic Portrait by Sir John 

E. Millais 92 

Lord Alfred Tennyson— After an Engraving by G. J. Stodart 

From a Photograph by J. Maya 11 96 

Facsimile of Tennyson's Original Manuscript of Crossing the 

Bar. (Copyright by the Macmillan Company) . . .100 

Robert Browning — From a Photograph by HoUyer after the 

Portrait by G. F. Watts, R. A 106 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning— After the Portrait by Field Tal- 

fourd no 

George Meredith with His Daughter and Grandchildren — 

From a Photograph Taken Shortly Before His Death . 118 

Flint Cottage, Boxhill, the Home of George Meredith— His 

Writing was done in a Small Swiss Chalet in the Garden 120 

Robert Louis Stevenson— The Author's Intimate Associates 
Pronounce this Photograph a Perfe£l Presentation of His 
Most Typical Expression 126 

Stevenson's Home at Valima, Samoa, Looking Toward Vaea 128 

Thomas Hardy— A Portrait Which Brmgs Out Strikingly the 
Man of Creative Power, the Artist, the Philosopher and 
the Poet 132 

Rudyard Kipling— A Striking Likeness of the Author in a 

Charadleristic Pose 1 40 

Rudyard Kipling— From a Cartoon by W. Nicholson . . 144 



[viii] 



Introdu&ion 

ll/fraim in this little hook has been to give 
IVJi short sketches and estimates of the 
greatest modern English writers from Mac- 
aulay to Stevenson and Kipling, Omissions 
there are^ but my effort has been to give the 
most chara^eristic writers a place and to try 
to stimulate the reader s interest in the man 
behind the book as well as in the best works 
of each author, T^oo much space is devoted in 
most literary criticism to the bare fa£fs of 
biography and the details of essays or novels 
or histories written by authors. My plan has 
been to arouse interest both in the men and 
their books so that any reader of this volume 
may be stimulated to extend his knowledge of 
the modern English classics, 

T^hese chapters include the greatest English 
writers during the last one hundred and fifty 
years and they have been prepared mainly for 
those who have no thorough knowledge of 
modern English books or authors. They are 
of limited scope so that few quotations have 
been possible. But they have been written 
with an eager desire to help those who care 
to know the best works of modern English 

[ix] 



IntroduBion 

authors. In the same spirit the most appro- 
friate illustrations have been secured and a 
helpful bibliography has been added. If this 
book helps readers to secure one lasting friend 
among these authors it will have done good 
missionary work; for to make the books of one 
man or woman of genius a part of our mental 
'possessions is to be set on the broad highway 
to literary culture. 



\A 



The 

Vital ^luality in 

Literature 

To Get the Spiritual Essence of a Great 
Book One Must Study the Man Who 
Wrote It-The Man Is the Best Epit- 
ome of His Message. 

7'N this volume as in its predecessor y^ Com- 
fort Found in Good Old Books ^'^ny aim 
has been to enforce the theory that behind 
every great book is a man^ greater than the 
best book that he ever wrote, T^his strong 
spiritual quality which every one of the great 
authors puts into his best books is what we 
should strive to secure when we read these 
great classics. Unless we get this spiritual 
part we miss the essence of the book. 

Hence it has been my aim in this volume 
to make clear what manner of men wrote 
these books which serve as the landmarks of 
modern English literature. 

The scope of this book is limit ed^ but from 
Macaulay to Kipling the effort has been to 

[xi] 



The Vital ^ality in Literature 

include those representative modern English 
authors who both in prose and verse best 
reflect the spiritual tendencies of their age. 
Whether essayists^ historians^ novelists or 
poets each of these writers has furnished 
something distinctive; each has caught some 
salient feature of his age and fixed it for all 
time in the amber of his thought. 

And what a bead-roll is this of great 
English worthies: Macaulay^ the most bril- 
liant and learned of all English essayists; 
Scott y the finest story-teller of his own or any 
other age; Carlyle^ the inspirer of ambitious 
youth; De ^incey^ the greatest artist in style, 
whose words are as music to the sensitive 
ear; DickenSy the master painter of sorrows 
and joys of the common people; 'Thackeray y 
the best interpreter of human life and char- 
a^er; Charlotte Bronte, the brooding Celtic 
genius who laid bare the hearts of women; 
George Eliot, the greatest artist of her sex 
in mastery of human emotion; Ruskin, the 
first to teach the common people appreciation 
of art and architecture; 'Tennyson, the melodi- 
ous singer who voiced the highest aspiration 
of his time; Browning, the greatest dramatic 
poet since Shakespeare; Charles Lamb, one 
of the tender est of essayists; George Mere- 
dith, the most brilliant and suggestive novelist 

[xii] 



The Vital ^ality in Literature 

of the Victorian age; Stevenson^ the best 
beloved and most artistic story-teller of his 
day; Hardy, the master painter of tragedies 
of rural life; and Kipling, the interpreter of 
Anglo-Indian life, the singer of the new age 
of science and discovery, the laureate of the 
gospel of blood and iron. 

'The work of each of these men and women 
who make up the splendid roll of English 
immortals varies in quality, in style, in capac- 
ity to touch the heart and inspire the thought 
of the reader of to-day. But great as are their 
differences, all meet on the common ground of 
a warm-hearted, sympathetic humanity that 
knows no distinctions of race or creed, no lim- 
itations of time or place. I'he splendid ser- 
mons on the gospel of work that Carlyle 
preached after long wrestlings of the spirit 
are as full of inspiration to the youth of to-day 
as they were when they came out from the 
mind of the man who actually lived the labo- 
rious life that he commended; the little lay 
discourses that may be found scattered through 
Thackeray s novels and essays are born of 
agony of spirit, and it is their spiritual power 
which keeps them fresh and full of inspira- 
tion in this age of doubt and materialism. 

And so we might go down through the 
whole list. Each of these great writers had 

[xiii] 



The Vital ^ality in Literature 

his Gethsemane^ from which he emerged with 
the power of moving the hearts of men. So 
when we read that most beautiful essay of 
Lamb's on ^^ Dream Children^'' our hearts ache 
for the lonely man who sacrificed the best 
things in life for the sake of the sister whom 
he loved better than his own happiness. And 
when we read 'Thackeray s eloquent words on 
family love we know that he wrote in his 
heart's bloody for the dearest woman in the 
world to him was lost forever in this worlds 
when the light of her reason was clouded. 

And so I have tried in these essays to show 
how bitter waters of sorrow have strength- 
ened the spirit of all these masters of English 
thought and style^ until they have poured out 
their hearts in eloquent words that can never 
die. Far across the gulf of years their sono- 
rous voices reach our ears. Pregnant are they 
with the passionate earnestness of these men 
and women of genius^ these bearers of the 
torch of spiritual inspiration passed from hand 
to hand down the centuries. 

When our souls are moved by some great 
bereavement then the words of these inspired 
writers soothe our griefs. When we are beaten 
down in the dust of conflict they come with 
the refreshment of water from springs in the 
everlasting hills. When we are bitter over 

[xiv] 



The Vital ^ality in Literature 

great losses or sore over hope deferred or 
stricken because friends have proved faith- 
less^ then they soften our hearts and give us 
courage to take up once more the battle of life. 



[XV] 



MODERN 

ENGLISH BOOKS OF 

POWER 



Macaulay's 

Essays in European 

History 

The Foremost Essayist in English 

LiTERATURE-HlS StYLE AND LEARNING 

Have Made Macaulay a Favorite 
For Over a Half Century. 

MACAULAY belonged to the nineteenth 
century, as he was born in 1800, but 
in his cast of mind, in his literary tastes and 
in his intense partisanship he belonged to 
the century that includes Swift, Johnson 
and Goldsmith. He stands alone among 
famous English authors by reason of his 
prodigious memory, his wide reading, his 
oratorical style and his singular ascendancy 
over the minds of young students. The 
only writers of modern times who can be 
classed with him as great personal forces 
in the development of young minds are 
Carlyle and Emerson, and of the three 
Macaulay must be given first place because 
of a certain dynamic quality in the man 

[3] 



Modern English Books of Power 

and his style which forces convidion on 
the mind of the immature reader. The 
same thing to a less extent is true of Carlyle, 
who suffers in his influence as one grows 
older. Emerson is in a class by himself. 
His appeal is that of pure reason and of 
high enthusiasm-an appeal that never 
loses its force with those who love the intel- 
lectual life. 

Many famous men have testified to the 
mental stimulus which they received from 
Macaulay*s essays. Upon these essays, 
contributed to the Edinburgh Review in 
its prime, Macaulay lavished all the re- 
sources of his vast scholarship, his discur- 
sive reading in the ancient and modern 
classics, his immense enthusiasm and his 
strong desire to prove his case. He was 
a great advocate before he was a great 
writer, and he never loses sight of the jury 
of his readers. He blackens the shadows 
and heightens the lights in order to make 
heroes out of Clive and Warren Hastings; 
he hammers Boswell and BoswelFs editor, 
Croker, over the sacred head of old Dr. 
Johnson ; he lampoons every eminentTory, 
as he idealizes every prominent Whig in 
English political history. Macaulay's style 
is declamatory; he wrote as though he were 

[4] 



Macaulay's Essays in History 

to deliver his essays from the rostrum; he 
abounds in antithesis; he works up your 
interest in the course of a long paragraph 
until he reaches his smashing climax, in 
which he fixes indelibly in your mind the 
impression which he desires to create. It 
is all like a great piece of legerdemain; 
your eyes cannot follow the processes, but 
your mind is amazed and then convinced 
by the triumphant proof of the conjuror*s 
skill. 

Macaulay had one of the most successful 
of lives. His early advantages were ample. 
He had a memory which made everything 
he read his own, ready to be drawn upon 
at a moment's notice. He was famous as 
an author at the early age of twenty-five; 
he was already a distinguished Parliamen- 
tary orator at thirty; at thirty-three he had 
gained a place in the East Indian Council. 
He never married, but he had an ideal 
domestic life in the home of his sister, and 
one of his nephews, George Otto Trevel- 
yan, wrote his biography, one of the best 
in the language, which reveals the sweet- 
ness of nature that lay under the hard 
surface of Macaulay*s charader. He made 
a fortune out of his books, and in ten years' 
service in India he gained another fortune, 

[5] 



Modern English Books of Power 

with the leisure for wide reading, which he 
utilized in writing his history of England. 
He died at the height of his fame, before 
his great mental powers had shown any 
sign of decay. Take it all in all, his was a 
happy Hfe, brimful of work and enjoyment. 
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born 
Odober 25, 1800, the son of a wealthy 
merchant who was adive in securing the 
abolition of the slave trade. His precocity 
is almost beyond belief He read at three 
years of age, gave signs of his marvelous 
memory at four, and when only eight 
years old wrote a theological discourse. He 
entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at 
eighteen, but his aversion to mathematics 
cost him college honors. He showed at 
Cambridge great fondness for Latin decla- 
mation and for poetry. At twenty-four he 
became a fellow of Trinity. He studied 
law, but did not practice. Literature and 
politics absorbed his attention. At twenty- 
five he made his first hit with his essay on 
Milton in the Edinburgh Review. 

This was followed in rapid succession 
by the series of essays on which his fame 
mainly rests. In 1830 he was eledled to 
Parliament, and in the following year he 
established his reputation as an orator by 

[6] 






^ 


if- 






• ^ 




-4 




1'^ 


^.^ — ..«<«#' 


\ 






':l 







'"V 



Thomas Babington Macaulay 
AT THE Age of Forty-nine— After an Engraving 

BY W. HOLL, FROM A DraWING BY 

George Richmond, A. R. A. 



Macaulay's Essays in History 

a great speech on the reform bill. But 
financial reverses came when he lost the 
lucrative post of Commissioner in Bank- 
ruptcy and his fellowship at Trinity lapsed. 
To gain an income he accepted the position 
of secretary of the Board of Control of 
Indian Affairs, and soon after was offered 
a seat in the Supreme Council of India at 
Calcutta at ^50,000 a year. He lived in 
India four years, and it was mainly in these 
years that he did the reading which after- 
ward bore fruit in his History of England, 
At thirty-nine Macaulay began his His- 
tory of England ^w^Kich. continued to absorb 
most of his time for the next twenty years. 
While he was working on his history he 
published Lays of Ancient Rome, that had 
a success scarcely inferior to that of Scott's 
Lady of the Lake or Byron's Childe Harold. 
He also published his essays, which had a 
remarkable sale. His history, the first two 
volumes of which appeared in 1 848, scored 
a success that astounded all the critics. 
When the third volume appeared in 1855, 
no less than twenty-six thousand, five 
hundred copies were sold in ten weeks, 
which broke all records of that day. Mac- 
aulay received royalties of over 1150,000 
on history, a sum which would have been 

[7] 



Modern English Books of Power 

trebled had he secured payment on editions 
issued in the United States, where his 
works were more popular than in his own 
country. His last years were crowded with 
honors. He accepted a peerage two years 
before his death. When the end came he 
was given a public funeral and a place in 
Westminster Abbey. 

WithCarlyle, Macaulay shares the honor 
of being the greatest of English essayists. 
While he cannot compare with Carlyle in 
insight into charader and in splendor of 
imagination, he appeals to the wider audi- 
ence because of his attradlive style, his 
wealth of ornament and illustration and 
his great clearness. Carlyle's appeal is 
mainly to students, but Macaulay appeals 
to all classes of readers. 

Macaulay's style has been imitated by 
many hands, but no one has ever worked 
such miracles as he wrought with apparent 
ease. In the first place, his learning was 
so much a part of his mind that he drew 
on its stores without effort. Scarcely a 
paragraph can be found in all his essays 
which is not packed with allusions, yet all 
seem to illustrate his subjedt so naturally 
that one never looks upon them as used to 
display his remarkable knowledge. 

[8] 



Macaulay's Essays in History 

Macaulay is a master of all the literary 
arts. Especially does he love to use an- 
tithesis and to make his effedls by violent 
contrasts. Add to this the art of skilful 
cHmax, clever alliteration, happy illustra- 
tion and great narrative power and you 
have the chief features of Macaulay's style. 
The reader is carried along on this flood 
of oratorical style, and so great is the 
author's descriptive power that one actually 
beholds the scenes and the personages which 
he depids. 

Of all his essays Macaulay shows his 
great powers most conspicuously in those 
on Milton, Clive, Warren Hastings and 
Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson. In 
these he is always the advocate laboring to 
convince his hearers; always the orator filled 
with that passion of enthusiasm which 
makes one accept his words for the time, 
just as one's mind is unconsciously swayed 
by the voice of an eloquent speaker. It is 
this intense earnestness, this fierce desire to 
convince, joined to this prodigal display of 
learning, which stamps Macaulay's words 
on the brain of the receptive reader. Only 
when in cold blood we analyze his essays 
do we escape from this literary hypnotism 
which he exerts upon every reader. 

[9J 



Modern English Books of Power 

The essays of Macaulay are full of meat 
and all are worth reading, but, of course, 
every reader will differ in his estimate of 
them according to his own tastes and sym- 
pathies. It is fine pradice to take one of 
these essays and look up the literary and 
historical allusions. No more attradive 
work than this can be set before a reading 
club. It will give rich returns in knowl- 
edge as well as in methods of literary study. 
Macaulay 's History is not read to-day as it 
was twenty years ago, mainly because his- 
torical writing in these days has suffered a 
great change, due to the growth of religious 
and political toleration. Macaulay is a 
partisan and a bigot, but if one can discount 
much of his bias and bitterness it will be 
found profitable to read portions of this 
history. Macaulay's verse is not of a high 
order, but his Lays are full of poetic fire, 
and they appeal to a wider audience than 
more finished verse. 

Of all the English writers of the last 
century Macaulay has preserved the strong- 
est hold on the reading public, and what- 
ever changes time may make in literary 
fashions, one may rest assured that Macau- 
lay will always retain his grip on readers of 
English blood. 

[lo] 



Scott 

AND His Waverley 

Novels 

The Greatest Novelist the World Has 
Known-He Made History Real and 
Created Characters That Will 
Never Die. 

IT is as difficult to sum up in a brief article 
the work and the influence of Sir Walter 
Scott as it is to make an estimate of Shake- 
speare, for Scott holds the same position in 
English prose fidion that Shakespeare 
holds in English poetry. In neither depart- 
ment is there any rival. In sheer creative 
force Scott stands head and shoulders above 
every other English novelist, and he has 
no superior among the novelists of any 
other nation. He has made Scotland and 
the Scotch people known to the world as 
Cervantes made Spain and the Spaniards 
a reality for all times. 

But he did more than Cervantes, for his 
creative mind reached over the border into 

["] 



Modern English Books of Power 

England and across the channel to France 
and Germany, and even to the Holy Land, 
and found there historical types which he 
made as real and as immortal as his own 
highland clansmen. His was the great cre- 
ative brain of the nineteenth century, and 
his work has made the world his debtor. 
His work stimulated the best story teller 
of France and gave the world Monte Crista 
and l^he ^hree Guardsmen, It fired the 
imaginations of a score of English histor- 
ical novelists ; it was the progenitor of Wey- 
man's A Soldier of France and Conan 
Doyle's Micah Clarke and 'The White Com- 
fany, 

Scott's mind was Shakespearean in its 
capacity for creating charadters of real flesh 
and blood; for making great historical per- 
sonages as real and vital as our next-door 
neighbors, and for bursts of sustained story 
telling that carry the reader on for scores 
of pages without an instant's drop in inter- 
est. Only the supreme masters in creative 
art can accomplish these things. And the 
wonder of it is that Scott did all these 
things without effort and without any 
self-consciousness. We can not imagine 
Scott bragging about any of his books or 
his characters, as Balzac did about Eugenie 

[12] 




Sir Walter Scott 
This Portrait is Taken from Chantrey's Bust 

NOW AT AbBOTSFORD, WHICH, ACCORDING TO 

Lockhart,**Alone Preserves for Pos- 
terity the Expression most fondly 
Remembered by All who Ever 
Mingled in his Domestic 
Circle'* 



Scott and His Waverley Novels 

Grandet and others of his French types. 
He was too big a man for any small vani- 
ties. But he was as human as Shakespeare 
in his love of money, his desire to gather 
his friends about him and his hearty enjoy- 
ment of good food and drink. 

It has become the fashion among some 
of our hair-splitting critics to decry Scott 
because of his carelessness in literary style, 
his tendency to long introductions, and his 
fondness for description. These critics will 
tell you that Turgeneff and Tolstoi are 
greater literary artists than Scott, just as 
they tell you that Thackeray and Dickens 
do not deserve a place among the foremost 
of English novelists. This petty, finical 
criticism, which would measure everything 
by its own rigid rule of literary art, loses 
sight of the great primal fad that Scott 
created more real characters and told more 
good stories than any other novelist, and 
that his work will outlive that of all his 
detradors. It ignores the fad that Thack- 
eray's wit, pathos, tenderness and knowl- 
edge of human nature make him immortal 
in spite of many defeds. It forgets that 
Dickens* humor, joy of living and keen 
desire to help his fellow man will bring 
him thousands of readers after all the 

[13] 



Modern English Books of Power 

apostles of realism are buried under the 
dust of oblivion. 

Scott had the ideal training for a great 
historical novelist. Yet his literary suc- 
cesses in verse and prose were the result 
of accident. It is needless here to review 
his life. The son of a mediocre Scotch 
lawyer, he inherited from his father his 
capacity for work and his passion for sys- 
tem and order. From his mother he drew 
his love of reading and his fondness for 
old tales of the Scotch border. Like so 
many famous writers, his early education 
was desultory, but he had the free run of 
a fine library, and when he was a mere 
schoolboy his reading of the best English 
classics had been wider and more thorough 
than that of his teachers. 

Forced by boyish illness to live in the 
country, he early developed a great love 
for the Scotch ballads and the tales of the 
romantic past of his native land. These 
he gathered mainly by word of mouth. 
Later he was a diligent student and col- 
ledlor of all the old ballads. In this way 
his mind was steeped in historical lore, 
while by many walking tours through the 
highlands he came to know the common 
people as very few have ever known them. 



^8*5*"*'*^ ^P 




W W O ? ^ S 5^ 
■ " o 



D > 
^ t-1 



> H 
m > 

^ s 

M O 

o 



Scott and His Waverley Novels 

Thus for forty years, while he was a 
working lawyer and a sheriff of his county, 
he was really laying up stores of material 
upon which he drew for his many novels. 
His literary tastes were first developed by 
study of German and by the translation 
of German ballads and plays. This prac- 
tice led him to write 'The Lay of the Last 
Minstrely and its success was responsible 
for Marmion and T^he Lady of the Lake, 
But great as was his triumph in verse, 
he dropped the writing of poems when 
Byron's work eclipsed his own. 

Then, in his forty-third year, he turned 
to prose and began with Waverley; that 
series of novels which is the greatest ever 
produced by one man. The success of his 
first story proved a great stimulus to his 
imagination, and for years he continued to 
produce these novels, three of which may 
be ranked as the best in English literature. 
The element of mystery in regard to the 
authorship added to Scott's literary suc- 
cess. It was his habit to crowd his literary 
work into the early hours from four to 
eight o'clock in the morning; the remain- 
der of the day was given up to legal duties 
and the evening to society. His tremen- 
dous energy and his power of concentra- 

[^5] 



Modern English Books of Power 

tion made these four hours equal to an 
ordinary man's working day. His mind 
was so full of material that the labor was 
mainly that of seledion. Creative work, 
when once seated at his desk, was as nat- 
ural as breathing. Scott came to his desk 
with the zest of a boy starting on a holi- 
day, and this pleasure is refleded in the 
ease and spontaneity of his stories. 

But much as he liked his literary work, 
Scott would not have produced so great a 
number of fine novels had he not been 
impelled by the desire to retrieve large 
money losses. His old school friend, 
Ballantyne, forced into bankruptcy the 
printing firm in which Scott was a secret 
partner. The novelist was not morally 
responsible for these debts, but his keen 
sense of honor made him accept all the 
responsibility, and it drove him to that 
unceasing work which shortened his life. 
He paid off nearly all the great debt, and 
he gave in this task an example of high 
courage and power of work that has never 
been surpassed and seldom equaled. You 
may read the record of those last years in 
Lockhart's fine Life of Scott, Get the one 
volume edition, for the full work is too 
long for these busy days, and follow the 

[i6] 



Scott and His Waverley Novels 

old author in his heroic struggle. It will 
bring tears to your eyes, but it will make 
you a lover of Scott, the man, who was as 
great as Scott, the poet and novelist. 

Ruskin, when he was making up a list 
of great authors, put opposite Scott's name, 
"Every line." That bit of advice cannot 
be followed in these strenuous times, but 
one must make a seledion of the best, and 
then, if he have time and inclination, add 
to this number. To my mind, the four 
great novels of Scott are Ivanhoe, ^entin 
Durwardy I'he 'Talisman and The Heart of 
Midlothian. The first gives you feudal 
England as no one else has painted it, 
with a pidure of Richard the Lion-Hearted 
which no historian has ever approached. 
It contains some of the most thrilling 
scenes in all fidlion. 

James Payn, who was a very clever 
novelist, relates the story that he and two 
literary friends agreed to name the scene 
in all fidion that they regarded as the 
most dramatic. When they came to com- 
pare notes they found that all three had 
chosen the same-the entry of the unknown 
knight at Ashby de la Zouch, who passes 
by the tents of the other contestants and 
strikes with a resounding clash the shield 

b7\ 



Modern English Books of Power 

of the haughty Templar. This romance 
also contains one of Scott's finest women, 
the Jewess Rebecca, who atones for the 
novelist's many insipid female characters. 
Scott was much like Stevenson-he pre- 
ferred to draw men, and he was happiest 
when in the clash of arms or about to 
undertake a desperate adventure. 

^entin Durward is memorable for its 
splendid pidure of Louis XI, one of 
the ablest as well as one of the mean- 
est men who ever sat on a throne. The 
early chapters of this novel, which describe 
the adventures of the young Scotch 
soldier at the court of France, have never 
been surpassed in romantic interest, ^he 
T^alisman gives the glory and the romance 
of the Crusades as no other imaginative 
work has done. It stands in a class by 
itself and is only approached by Scott's 
last novel. Count Robert of Paris^ which 
gives flashes of the same spirit. 

Of the Scotch novels it is difficult to 
make a choice, but it seems to me 'The 
Heart of Midlothian has the widest appeal, 
although many would cast their votes for 
Old Mortality y The Antiquary or Roh Roy 
because of the rich humor of those romances. 
Scott's dialed, although true to nature, is 

[i8] 



Scott and His Waverley Novels 

not difficult, as he did not consider it neces- 
sary to give all the colloquial terms, like 
the modern "kailyard" writers. 

If you read three or four of Scott's novels 
you are pretty apt to read more. It is an 
easy matter to skip the prolix passages and 
the unnecessary introductions. This done, 
you have a body of romance that is far 
richer than any present-day fi6lion. And 
their great merit is that, though written in 
a coarse age, the Waverley novels are sweet 
and wholesome. One misses a great source 
of enjoyment and culture who fails to read 
the best of Scott's novels. Take them all 
in all, they are the finest fidtion that has 
ever been written, and their continued popu- 
larity, despite their many faults, is the best 
proof of their sterling merit. 



[19] 



Carlyle 

As AN Inspirer 

OF Youth 

The Finest English Prose Writer of 

The Last Century-His Best Books, 

"Past and Present," "Sartor Resar- 

TUS" AND THE "FrENCH ReVOLUTION/* 

As an Influence in stimulating school and 
k college students, Macaulay must be 
given a foremost place, but greater than 
Macaulay, because of his spiritual fervor 
and his moral force, stands Thomas Carlyle, 
the great prophet and preacher of the nine- 
teenth century, whose influence will outlast 
that of all other writers of his time. And 
this spiritual potency, which resides in his 
best work, is not weakened by his love of 
the Strong Man in History or his fear of 
the rising tide of popular democracy, in 
which he saw a dreadful repetition of the 
horrors of the French Revolution. It was 
the Puritan element in his granite charader 

[20] 




Thomas Carlyle 

From the World-Famed Masterpiece of 

Portraiture by James McNeill 

Whistler 



Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth 

which gave most of the flaming spiritual 
ardor to Carlyle*s work. It was this which 
made him the greatest preacher of his day, 
although he had left behind him all the 
old articles of faith for which his forefathers 
went cheerfully to death on many a bloody 
field. 

Carlyle believed a strong religious faith 
was vital to any real and lasting work in 
this world, and from the day he gave out 
Sartor Resartus he preached this dodlrine in 
all his books. He was born into a genera- 
tion that was content to accept the forms 
of religion, so long as it could enjoy the 
good things of this world, and much of 
Carlyle's speech sounded to the people of 
his day like the warnings of the prophet 
Isaiah to the Israelites of old. But Carlyle 
was never daunted by lack of appreciation 
or by any ridicule or abuse. These only 
made him more confident in his belief that 
the spiritual life is the greatest thing in 
this world. And he adually lived the life 
that he preached. 

For years Carlyle failed to make enough 
to support himself and his wife, yet he 
refused a large income, offered by the Lon- 
don Times for editorial work,on the ground 
that he could not write to order nor bend 

[21] 



Modern English Books of Power 

his opinions to those of others. He put 
behind him the temptation to take advan- 
tage of great fame when it suddenly came 
to him. When publishers were eager for 
his work he spent the same time in pre- 
paring his books as when he was poor and 
unsought. He labored at the smallest 
task to give the best that was in him; he 
wrote much of his work in his heart's 
blood. Hence it is that through all of his 
books, but especially through Past and 
Present and Heroes and Hero JVorship^on^ 
feels the strong beat of the heart of this 
great man, who yearned to make others 
follow the spiritual life that he had found 
so full of strength and comfort. 

Carlyle*s life was largely one of work 
and self-denial. He was born of poor par- 
ents at the little village of Ecclefechan, 
in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. His father, 
though an uneducated stone-mason, was a 
man of great mental force and originality, 
while his mother was a woman of fine 
imagination, with a large gift of story tell- 
ing. The boy received the groundwork 
of a good education and then walked eighty 
miles to Edinburgh University. Born in 
1795, Carlyle went to Edinburgh in 1809. 
His painful economy at college laid the 

[22] 



Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth 

foundation of the dyspepsia which troubled 
him all his days, hampered his work and 
made him take a gloomy view of life. At 
Edinburgh he made a specialty of mathe- 
matics and German. He remained at the 
university five years. 

The next fifteen years were spent in 
tutoring, hack writing for the publishers 
and translation from the German. His 
first remunerative work was the translation 
of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, a version 
which still remains the best in English. 
After his marriage to Jane Welsh he was 
driven by poverty to take refuge on his 
wife's lonely farm at Craigenputtock, where 
he did much reading and wrote the early 
essays which contain some of his best work. 
The Edinburgh Review and Eraser's 
were opened to him. 

Finally, in 1833, when he was nearly 
forty years old, he made his first literary 
hit with Sartor Resartus^ which called out 
a storm of caustic criticism. The Germanic 
style, the elephantine humor, the strange 
conceits and the sledge-hammer blows at 
all which the smug English public regarded 
with reverence-all these features aroused 
irritation. Four years later came ne French 
Revolutionywhich established Carlyle's fame 

[23] 



Modern English Books of Power 

as one of the greatest of English writers. 
From this time on he was freed from the 
fear of poverty, but it was only in his last 
years, when he needed little, that he 
enjoyed an income worthy of his labors. 

Carlyle's great books,beside those I have 
mentioned, are the lives of Cromwell and 
oi Frederick the Great, These are too long 
for general reading, but a single volume 
condensation of the Frederick gives a good 
idea of Carlyle^s method of combining 
biography and history. Carlyle outlived 
all his contemporaries— a lonely old man, 
full of bitter remorse over imaginary neg- 
lect of his wife, and full also of despair 
over the democratic tendencies of the age, 
which he regarded as the outward signs of 
national degeneracy. 

Carlyle's fame was clouded thirty years 
ago by the unwise publication of reminis- 
cences and letters which he never intended 
for print. Froude was chosen as his biog- 
rapher. One of the great masters of Eng- 
lish, Froude was a bachelor who idealized 
Mrs. Carlyle and who regarded as the 
simple truth an old man*s bitter regrets 
over opportunities negleded to make his 
wife happier. Everyone who has studied 
Carlyle^s life knows that he was dogmatic, 

[24] 



Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth 

dyspeptic, irritable, and given to sharp 
speech even against those he loved the 
best. But over against these failings must 
be placed his tenderness, his unfaltering 
affedion, his self-denial, his tremendous 
labors, his small rewards. 

When separated from his wife Carlyle 
wrote her letters that are like those of a 
young lover, an infinite tenderness in every 
line. One of her great crosses was the 
belief that her husband was in love with 
the brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jeal- 
ousy was absurd, as this great lady invited 
Carlyle to her dinners because he was the 
most brilliant talker in all England, and 
he accepted because the opportunity to 
indulge in monologue to appreciative hear- 
ers was a keener pleasure to him than to 
write eloquent warnings to his day and 
generation. Froude*s unhappy book, with 
a small library of commentary that it called 
forth, is practically forgotten, but Carlyle*s 
fame and his books endure because they 
are real and not founded on illusion. 

Carlyle opens a new world to the col- 
lege student or the ambitious youth who 
may be gaining an education by his own 
efforts. He sounds a note that is found in 
no other author of our time. Doubtless 

[25J 



Modern English Books of Power 

some of this attradion is due to his singu- 
lar style, formed on a long study of the 
German, but most of it is due to the tre- 
mendous earnestness of the man, which 
lays hold of the young reader. Never shall 
I forget when in college preparatory days 
I devoured P^j/ and Present and was stirred 
to extra effort by its trumpet calls that 
work is worship and that the night soon 
Cometh when no man can work. 

His tine chapter on Labor ^vfixh. its splen- 
did version of the Mason^s Song of Goethe 
has stimulated thousands to take up heavy 
burdens and gp on with the struggle for 
that culture of the mind and the soul which 
is the more precious the harder the fight 
to secure it. I remember copying in a 
commonplace book some of Carlyle*s son- 
orous passages that stir the blood of the 
young like a bugle call to arms. Reading 
them over years after, I am glad to say 
that they still appealed to me, for it seems 
to me that the saddest thing in this world 
is to lose one's youthful enthusiasms. When 
you can keep these fresh and strong, after 
years of contadl with a selfish world, age 
cannot touch you. 

In this appeal to all that is best and 
noblest in youth, Carlyle stands unrivaled. 

[26] 







-*^(4*Ux4^ 



[ll^- 



Archhouse, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire 

The Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle-From a 

Photograph in the Possession of Alexander 

Carlyle, M.A.ON WHICH Carlyle has 

Written a Memorandum to Show 

in which Room He was Born 



Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth 

He has far more heart, force and real warm 
blood than Emerson, who saw just as 
clearly, but who could not make his thought 
reach the reader. A course in Carlyle 
should be compulsory in the freshman 
year at every college. If the lecturer were 
a man still full of his early enthusiasms it 
could not fail to have rich results. Take, 
for instance, those two chapters in Past 
and Present that are entitled "Happy" and 
"Labor." In a dozen pages are summed 
up all Carlyle's creed. In these pages he 
declares that the only enduring happiness 
is found in good, honest work, done with 
all a man's heart and soul. And after 
caustic words on the modern craving for 
happiness he ends a noble diatribe with 
these words, which are worth framing and 
hanging on the wall, where they may be 
studied day by day: 

Brief brawling Day, with its noisy phantasms, its 
poor paper-crown's tinsel -gilt^ is gone; and divine 
everlasting Night, with her star-diadems, with her 
silences and her veracities, is come ! What hast thou 
done, and how? Happiness, unhappiness; all that was 
but wages thou hadst; thou hast spent all that, in sus- 
taining thyself hitherward ; not a coin of it remains 
with thee ; it is all spent, eaten ; and now thy work, 
where is thy work ? Swift, out with it ; let us see thy 
work! 

[27] 



Modern English Books of Power 

Sartor Resartus is very hard reading, but 
if you make up your mind to go through 
it you will be repaid by many fine thoughts 
and many noble passages of impassioned 
prose. Under the guise of Herr Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh, Carlyle tells the story of 
his early religious doubts, his painful strug- 
gles that recall Bunyan's wrestlings with 
despair, and his final entry upon a new 
spiritual life. He wrote to let others know 
how he had emerged from the Valley of 
the Shadow of Pessimism into the deledl- 
able Mountains of Faith. Carlyle was the 
first of his day to proclaim the great truth 
that the spiritual life is far more important 
than the material life, and this he showed 
by the humorous philosophy of clothes, 
which he unfolded in the style of the Ger- 
man pedants. Carlyle evidently took great 
pleasure in developing this satire on Ger- 
man philosophy, which is full of broad 
humor. 

'The French Revolution has been aptly 
called "history by lightning flashes.** One 
needs to have a good general idea of the 
period before reading Carlyle*s work. Then 
he can enjoy this series of splendid pidures 
of the upheaval of the nether world and 
the strange moral monsters that sated their 

[28] 



Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth 

lust for blood and power in those evil days, 
which witnessed the terrible payment of 
debts of selfish monarchy. Carlyle reaches 
the height of his power in this book, which 
may be read many times with profit. 

The sources of Carlyle's strength as a 
writer are his moral and spiritual fervor 
and his power of making the reader see 
what he sees. The first insures him endur- 
ing fame, as it makes what he wrote eighty 
years ago as fresh and as full of fine stim- 
ulus as though it were written yesterday. 
The^ other faculty was born in him. He 
had an eye for pidures; he described what 
he saw down to the minutest detail; he 
made the men of the French Revolution 
as real as the people he met on his tour of 
Ireland. He made Cromwell and Frederick 
men of blood and iron, not mere historical 
lay figures. And over all he cast the glam- 
our of his own indomitable spirit, which 
makes life look good even to the man who 
feels the pinch of poverty and whose out- 
look is dreary. You can't keep down the 
boy who makes Carlyle his daily compan- 
ion; he will rise by very force of fighting 
spirit of this dour old Scotchman. 



[29] 



De Quincey 

As A Master of 
Style 

He Wrote "Confessions of an English 
Opium-Eater-Dreamed Dreams and 
Saw Visions and Pictured Them in 
Poetic Prose. 

OF all the English writers Thomas De 
Quincey must be given the palm for 
rhythmical prose. He is as stately as Mil- 
ton, with more than Milton's command of 
rhythm. If you read aloud his best pas- 
sages, which are written in what he calls 
his bravura style, you have a near approach 
to the music of the organ. De Quincey 
was so nice a judge of words, he knew so 
well how to balance his periods, that one 
of his sentences gives to the appreciative 
ear the same delight as a stanza of perfed 
verse. 

Ruskin had much of De Quincey's com- 
mand of impassioned prose, but he never 
rose to the same sustained heights as the 

[30] 




Thomas De Quincey 
From an Old Engraving 



De QyiNCEY As A Master of Style 

older author. In fa6l, De Quincey stands 
alone in these traits: the mass and accuracy 
of his accumulated knowledge; the power 
of making the finest distindions clear to 
any reader, and the gorgeous style, thick 
with the embroidery of poetical figures, 
yet never giving the impression of over- 
adornment. And above all these merits is 
the supreme charm of melodious, rhyth- 
mical sentences, which give the same enjoy- 
ment as fine music. 

Forty years ago De Quincey's Confessions 
of an English Opium-Eater was read by 
everyone who professed any knowledge of 
the masters of English literature. To-day 
it is voted old-fashioned, and few are famil- 
iar with its splendid imagery. His other 
works, which fill over a dozen volumes, 
are practically forgotten, mainly because 
his style is very diffuse and his constant 
digressions weary the reader who has small 
leisure for books. 

No one, however, should miss reading 
the Confessions, the Autobiography and some 
one essay, such, for instance, as "Murder 
as One of the Fine Arts," or "The Flight 
of a Tartar Tribe,'' or "The Vision of Sud- 
den Death" in An English Mail Coach, All 
these contain passages of the greatest beauty 

[31] 



Modern English Books of Power 

He lost his father at the age of seven, and 
his mother seems to have given little per- 
sonal attention to him. He was in nominal 
charge of four guardians, and at seventeen, 
when his health had been seriously reduced 
by lack of exercise and overdosing of medi- 
cines, the sensitive boy ran away from the 
Manchester Grammar school and wandered 
for several months in Wales. He was 
allowed a pound a week by one of his 
guardians, and he made shift with this for 
months; but finally the hunger for books, 
which he had no money to buy, sent him 
to London. There he undertook to get 
advances from money-lenders on his expec- 
tations. This would have been easy, as he 
was left a substantial income in his father's 
will, but these Shylocks kept the boy 
waiting. 

In his Confessions he tells of his suffer- 
ings from want of food, of his nights in 
an unfurnished house in Soho with a little 
girl who was the "slavey" of a disreputable 
lawyer, of his wanderings in the streets, of 
the saving of his life by an outcast woman 
whom he has immortalized in the most elo- 
quent passages of the book. Finally, he was 
restored to his friends and went to Oxford. 
His mental independence prevented him 

[34] 




x^^ 



De Quincey with Two Daughters 

AND Grandchild— From a Chalk Drawing 

BY James Archer, R. S. A. 

MADE IN 1855. 



De Quincey As a Master of Style 

from taking a degree, and chronic neuralgia 
of the face and teeth led him to form the 
habit of taking opium, which clung to him 
for life. 

De Quincey was a close associate of Col- 
eridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb and 
others. He was a brilliant talker, especially 
when stimulated with opium, but he was 
incapable of sustained intelledual work. 
Hence all his essays and other work first 
appeared in periodicals and were then pub- 
lished in book form. It is noteworthy that 
an American publisher was the first to 
gather his essays in book form, and that 
his first appreciation, like that of Carlyle, 
came from this country. 

Much of De Quincey's work is now 
unreadable because it deals with political 
economy and allied subjedts, in which he 
fancied he was an expert. He is a master 
only when he deals with pure literature, 
but he has a large vein of satiric humor 
that found its best expression in the gro- 
tesque irony of "Murder as One of the 
Fine Arts." In this essay he descants on 
the greatest crime as though it were an 
accomplishment, and his freakish wit makes 
this paper as enjoyable as Charles Lamb*s 
essay on the origin of roast pig. 

[35] 



Modern English Books of Power 

De Quincey's fame, however, rests upon 
'The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 
This is a record unique in English litera- 
ture. It tells in De Quincey*s usual style, 
with many tedious digressions, the story of 
his negledled boyhood, his revolt at school 
discipline and monotony that had shattered 
his health, his wanderings in Wales, his life 
as a common vagrant in London, his college 
life, his introdudlion to opium and the 
dreams that came with indulgence in the 
drug. The gorgeous beauty of DeQuincey's 
pictures of these opium visions has prob- 
ably induced many susceptible readers to 
make a trial of the drug, with deep dis- 
appointment as the result. No common 
mind can hope to have such visions as De 
Quincey records. 

His imagination has well been called 
Druidic; it played about the great fads and 
personages of history and it invested these 
with a background of the most solemn and 
imposing natural features. These dreams 
came to have with him the very semblance 
of reality. Read the terrible passages in 
the Confessions in which the Malay figures; 
read the dream fugues in "Suspira," the 
visions seen by the boy when he looked 
on his dead sister's face, or the noble pas- 

[36] 



De Quincey As a Master of Style 

sages that pidure the three Ladies of Sor- 
row. Here is a passage on the vision of 
eternity at his sister's death bier, which 
gives a good idea of De Quincey's style: 

Whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow— the 
saddest that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might 
have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand cen- 
turies. Many times since upon summer days, when the 
sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same 
wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, 
Memnonian, but saintly swell; it is in this world the 
one great audible symbol of eternity. 

It is a great temptation to quote some 
of De Quincey's fine passages, but most of 
them are so interwoven with the context 
that the most eloquent bits cannot be taken 
out without the loss of their beauty. De 
Quincey was a dreamer before he became 
a slave to opium. This drug intensified a 
natural tendency until he became a vision- 
ary without an equal in English literature. 
And these visions, evoked by his splendid 
imagination, are worth reading in these 
days as an antidote to the materialism of 
present-day life; they demonstrate the 
power of the spiritual life, which is the 
potent and abiding force in all literature. 



[37] 



Charles Lamb 

And The Essays of 

Elia 

The Best Beloved of All the English 
Writers-Quaintest and Tenderest 
Essayist Whose Work Appeals to 
All Hearts. 

OF all the English writers of the last 
century none is so well beloved as 
Charles Lamb. Thirty years ago his Essays 
of Elia was a book which every one with 
any claim to culture had not only read, 
but read many times. It was the traveling 
companion and the familiar friend, the 
unfailing resource in periods of depression, 
the comforter in time of trouble. It touched 
many experiences of life, and it ranged 
from sunny, spontaneous humor to that 
pathos which is too deep for tears. Into it 
Lamb put all that was rarest and best in 
his nature, all that he had gleaned from a 
life of self-sacrifice and spiritual culture. 

[38] 




Charles Lamb 

From the Portrait by 

William Hazlitt 



Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia 

Such men as he were rare in his day, and 
not understood by the literary men of 
harder nature who criticised his peculiari- 
ties and failed to appreciate the delicacy 
of his genius. Only one such has appeared 
in our time-he who has given us a look 
into his heart in A Window in thrums and 
in that beautiful tribute to his mother, 
Margaret Ogilvie, Barrie, in his insight 
into the mind of a child and in his freakish 
fancy that seems brought over from the 
world of fairyland to lend its glamour to 
prosaic life, is the only successor to Lamb. 

Lamb can endure this negled:, for were 
he able to revisit this earth no one would 
touch more whimsically than he upon the 
fads and the foibles of contemporary life; 
but it's a great pity that in the popular 
craze about the new writers,all redolent with 
the varnish of novelty, we should consign 
to the dust of unused shelves the works 
of Charles Lamb. All that he wrote which 
the world remembers is in Elia and his 
many letters-those incomparable epistles 
in which he quizzed his friends and revealed 
the tenderness of his nature and the deli- 
cacy of his fancy. 

Robert Louis Stevenson is justly re- 
garded as the greatest essayist of our time, 

[39] 



Modern English Books of Power 

but I would not exchange the Essays of 
Elia for the best things of the author of 
Virginibus Puerisque, Stevenson always, 
except in his familiar early letters, suggests 
the literary artist who has revised his first 
draft, with an eye fixed on the world of 
readers who will follow him when he is 
gone. But Lamb always wrote with that 
charming spontaneous grace that comes 
from a mind saturated with the best read- 
ing and mellow with much thought. You 
fancy him jotting down his thoughts, with 
his quizzical smile at the effedt of his quips 
and cranks. You cannot figure him as 
laboriously searching for the right word or 
painfully recasting the same sentence many 
times until he reached the form which 
suited his finical taste. This was Steven- 
son's method, and it leaves much of his 
work with the smell of the lamp upon it. 
Lamb apparently wrote for the mere pleas- 
ure of putting his thoughts in form, just 
as he talked when his stammering tongue 
had been eased with a little good old wine. 
It is idle to expedl another Lamb in our 
strenuous modern life, so we should make 
the most of this quaint Englishman of the 
early part of the last century, who seemed 
to bring over into an artificial age all the 

[40] 



Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia 

dewy freshness of fancy of the old Eliza- 
bethan worthies. Can anything be more 
perfed in its pathos than his essay on 
"Dream Children," the tender fancy of a 
bachelor whom hard fate robbed of the 
domestic joys that would have made life 
beautiful for him? Can anything be more 
full of fun than his "Dissertation on Roast 
Pig," or his "Mrs. Battle's Opinion on 
Whist"? His style fitted his thought like 
a glove; about it is the aroma of an earlier 
age when men and women opened their 
hearts like children. Lamb lays a spell upon 
us such as no other writer can work; he 
plays upon the strings of our hearts, now 
surprising us into wholesome laughter, 
now melting us to tears. You may know 
his essays by heart, but you can't define 
their elusive charm. 

Lamb had one of the saddest of lives, yet 
he remained sweet and wholesome through 
trials that would have embittered a nature 
less fine and noble. He came of poor people 
and he and his sister Mary inherited from 
their mother a strain of mental unsound- 
ness. Lamb spent seven years in Christ's 
Hospital as a "Blue Coat" boy, and the 
chief result, aside from the foundations of 
a good classical scholarship, was a friend- 

[41] 



Modern English Books of Power 

ship for Coleridge which endured through 
life. From this school he was forced to go 
into a clerkship in the South Sea house, 
but after three years he secured a desk in 
the East India house, where he remained 
for thirty years. 

Four years later his first great sorrow 
fell upon Lamb. His sister Mary sud- 
denly developed insanity, attacked a maid 
servant, and when the mother interfered 
the insane girl fatally wounded her with a 
knife. In this crisis Lamb showed the 
fineness of his nature. Instead of permit- 
ting poor Mary to be consigned to a pub- 
lic insane asylum, he gave bonds that he 
would care for her, and he did care for her 
during the remainder of her life. Although 
in love with a girl, he resolutely put aside 
all thoughts of marriage and domestic hap- 
piness and devoted himself to his unfor- 
tunate sister, who in her lucid periods 
repaid his devotion with the tenderest 
affedion. 

Lamb's letters to Coleridge in those try- 
ing days are among the most pathetic in 
the language. To Coleridge he turned for 
stimulus in his reading and study, and he 
never failed to get help and comfort from 
this great, ill-balanced man of genius. Later 

[42] 



Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia 

he began a correspondence with Southey, 
in which he betrayed much humor and 
great fancy. In his leisure he saturated his 
mind with the EHzabethan poets and dram- 
atists; pradically he lived in the sixteenth 
century, for his only real life was a stu- 
dent's dream life. He contributed to the 
London newspapers, but his first published 
work to score any success was his T^ales 
From Shakespeare^ in which his sister aided 
him. Then followed Poets Contemporary 
With Shakespeare^ selections with critical 
comment, which at once gave Lamb rank 
among the best critics of his time. He 
wrote,when the mood seized him, recollec- 
tions of his youth, essays and criticisms 
which he afterward issued in two volumes. 
Twenty-five essays that he contributed 
to the London Magazine over the signa- 
ture of Elia were reprinted in a book, the 
Essays of Elia , and established Lamb's rep- 
utation as one of the great masters of 
English. Another volume o^ Essays of Elia 
was published in 1833. ^^ 1^34 Lamb 
sorrowed over the death of Coleridge, and 
in November of the same year death came 
to him. Of all English critics Carlyle is 
the only one who had hard words for 
Lamb, and the Sage of Chelsea probably 

[43] 



Modern English Books of Power 

wrote his scornful comment because of 
some playful jest of Elia. 

Charles Lamb's taste was for the wri- 
ters of the Elizabethan age, and even in 
his time he found that this taste had become 
old-fashioned. He complained, when only 
twenty-one years old, in a letter to Col- 
eridge, that all his friends "read nothing but 
reviews and new books." His letters, like 
his essays, refled: the reading of little-known 
books; they show abundant traces of his 
loiterings in the byways of literature. 

Here there is space only to dwell on 
some of the best of the Essays of Elia. In 
these we find the most pathetic deal with the 
sufferings of children. Lamb himself had 
known loneliness and suffering and lack 
of appreciation when a boy in the great 
Blue Coat School. Far more vividly than 
Dickens he brings before us his negleded 
childhood and all that it represented in 
lonely helplessness. Then he deals with 
later things, with his love of old books, 
his passion for the play, his delight in Lon- 
don and its various aspeds, his joy in all 
strange chara6ters like the old benchers of 
the Inner Temple. 

The essay opens with that alluring pic- 
ture of the South Sea house, and is followed 

[44] 




Mary and Charles Lamb 
From the Painting by F. S. Gary 

MADE IN 1834 



Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia 

by the reminiscences of Christ's Hospital, 
where Lamb was a schoolboy for seven 
years. These show one side of Lamb's 
nature-the quaintly reminiscent. Another 
side is revealed in "Mrs. Battle's Opinions 
on Whist," with its delicate irony and its 
playful humor, while still another phase is 
seen in the exquisite phantasy of "Dream 
Children," with its tender pathos and its 
revelation of a heart that never knew the 
joys of domestic love and care. Yet close 
after this beautiful reverie comes "A Dis- 
sertation On Roast Pig," in which Lamb 
develops the theory that the Chinese first 
discovered the virtues of roast suckling pig 
after a fire which destroyed the house of 
Ho-ti, and that with the fatuousness of 
the race they regularly burned down their 
houses to enjoy this succulent delicacy. 

"The Last Essays of Elia y a second series 
which Lamb brought out with a curious 
preface "by a friend of the late Elia," do 
not differ from the earlier series, save that 
they are shorter and are more devoted to 
literary themes. Perfed in its pathos is 
"The Superannuated Man," while "The 
Child Angel" is a dream which appeals to 
the reader more than any of the splendid 
dreams that De Quincey immortalized in 

[45] 



Modern English Books of Power 

his florid prose. Lamb in these essays gives 
some wise counsel on books and reading, 
urging with a whimsical earnestness the 
claims of the good old books which had 
been his comfort in many dark hours. It 
is in such confidences that we come very 
close to this man, so richly endowed with 
all endearing qualities that the world will 
never forget Elia and his exquisite essays. 



[46] 



Dickens 

The Foremost of 

Novelists 

More Widely Read Than Any Other 
Story Teller-The Greatest of the 
Modern Humorists Appeals to the 
Readers of All Ages and Classes. 

Charles Dickens is the greatest English 
novelist since Scott, and he and Scott, 
to my mind, are the greatest English wri- 
ters after Shakespeare. Many will dissent 
from this, but my reason for giving him 
this foremost place among the modern 
writers is the range, the variety, the dra- 
matic power, the humor and the pathos of 
his work. He was a great caricaturist rather 
than a great artist, but he was supreme in 
his class, and his grotesque charad:ers have 
enough in them of human nature to make 
them accepted as real people. 

To him belongs the first place among 
novelists, after Scott, because of his splen- 
did creative imagination, which has peopled 

[47] 



Modern English Books of Power 

the world of fidlion with scores of fine char- 
acters. His genial humor which has bright- 
ened life for so many thousands of readers; 
his tender pathos which brings tears to the 
eyes of those who seldom weep over imagi- 
nary or even real grief or pain; his rollick- 
ing gayety which makes one enjoy good 
food and good drink in his tales almost as 
much as if one really shared in those feasts 
he was so fond of describing; his keen 
sympathy with the poor and the suffering; 
his flaming anger against injustice and cru- 
elty that resulted in so many great public 
reforms; his descriptive power that makes 
the reader adlually see everything that he 
depicts— all these traits of Dickens' genius 
go to make him the unquestioned leader 
of our modern story tellers. Without his 
humor and his pathos he would still stand 
far above all others of his day; with these 
qualities, which make every story he ever 
wrote throb with genuine human feeling, 
he stands in a class by himself. 

Many literary critics have spent much 
labor in comparing Dickens with Thack- 
eray, but there seems to me no basis for 
such comparison. One was a great carica- 
turist who wrote for the common people 
and brought tears or laughter at will from 

[48] 




Charles Dickens 

AT THE Age of Twenty-seven- From the 

Portrait by Daniel Maclise, R. A. 



Dickens Foremost of Novelists 

the kitchen maid as freely as from the 
great lady; from the little child with no 
knowledge of the world as readily as from 
the mature reader who has known wrong, 
sorrow and suffering. The other was the 
supreme literary artist of modern times, a 
gentleman by instind: and training, who 
wrote for a limited class of readers, and 
who could not, because of nature and tem- 
perament, touch at will the springs of 
laughter and tears as Dickens did. Dickens 
has created a score of charaders that are 
household words to one that Thackeray 
has given us. 

Both were men of the rarest genius, 
English to the core, but each expressed his 
genius in his own way, and the way of 
Dickens touched a thousand hearts where 
Thackeray touched but one. Personally, 
Thackeray appeals to me far more than 
Dickens does, but it is foolish to permit 
one's own fancies to bHnd or warp his 
critical judgments. Hence I set Dickens 
at the head of modern novelists and give 
him an equal place with Scott as the great- 
est English writer since Shakespeare. 

Take it all in all, Dickens had a success- 
ful and a happy life. He was born in 1 8 12 
and died in 1870. His boyhood was hard 

[49] 



Modern English Books of Power 

because of his father's thriftlessness, and it 
always rankled in his memory that at nine 
years of age he was placed at work pasting 
labels on boxes of shoe blacking. But he 
had many chances in childhood and youth 
for reading and study, and his keen mind 
took advantage of all these. He was a 
natural mimic, and it was mere blind chance 
that kept him from the stage and made 
him a great novelist. He drifted into news- 
paper work as a shorthand reporter, wrote 
the stories that are known as Sketches by 
BoZy and in this way came to be engaged 
to write the Pickwick Papers^ to serve as a 
story to accompany drawings by Seymour, 
a popular artist. But Dickens from the 
outset planned the story and Seymour 
lived only to illustrate the first number. 

The tale caught the fancy of the public, 
and Dickens developed Pickwick, the Wel- 
lers and other charaders in a most amusing 
fashion. Great success marked the appear- 
ance of the Pickwick Papers in book form, 
and the public appreciation gave Dickens 
confidence and stimulus. Soon appeared 
Oliver I'wisi, Nicholas Nickleby, OldCurosity 
Shop and the long line of familiar stories 
that ended with The Mystery of Edwin 
Droody left unfinished by the master's hand. 

[50] 



Dickens Foremost of Novelists 

All these novels were originally pub- 
lished in monthly numbers. In these days, 
when so many new novels come from the 
press every month, it is difficult to appre- 
ciate the eagerness with which one of these 
monthly parts of Dickens' stories was 
awaited in England as well as in this coun- 
try. My father used to tell of the way 
these numbers of Dickens* novels were 
seized upon in New England when he was 
a young man and were worn out in passing 
from hand to hand. Dickens first devel- 
oped the Christmas story and made it a 
real addition to the joy of the holiday 
season. His Christmas Carol ?Lnd I'he Cricket 
on the Hearth still stand as the best of these 
tales that paint the simple joys of the great- 
est of English Holidays. Dickens was 
also a great editor, and in Household 
Words and All The Year Round he 
found a means of giving pleasure to hosts of 
readers as well as a vehicle for the monthly 
publication of his novels. 

Dickens was the first to make a great 
fortune by giving public readings from his 
own works. His rare dramatic ability made 
him an ideal interpreter of his own work, 
and those who were fortunate enough to 
hear him on his two trips to this country 

[51] 



Modern English Books of Power 

speak always of the light which these read- 
ings cast on his principal characters and of 
the pleasure that the audience showed in 
the novelist's remarkable powers as a mimic 
and an elocutionist. 

Most of the great English writers have 
labored until forty or over before fame came 
to them. Of such were Scott, Thackeray, 
Carlyle and George Eliot. But Dickens 
had an international fame at twenty-four, 
and he was a household word wherever 
English was spoken by the time he was 
thirty. From that day to the day of his 
death, fame, popularity, wealth, troops of 
friends, were his portion, and with these 
were joined unusual capacity for work and 
unusual delight in the exercise of his great 
creative powers. 

In taking up Dickens* novels it must 
always be borne in mind that you will find 
many digressions, many bits of afFedation, 
some mawkish pathos. But these defedls do 
not seriously injure the stories. You cannot 
afford to leave Pickwick Papers unread, 
because this novel contains more sponta- 
neous humor than any other of Dickens' 
work, and it is also quoted most frequently. 
The boy or girl who cannot follow with 
relish the amusing incidents in this book 

[52] 



/^ //if^'^^^^Ki^. ^A^yj ^^ 




4i./ 'POSTHUMOUS PAPERS 




LOrfDON: CHAPMAN i HALU 18C, STRAND. 



Original Pickwick Cover Issued in 1837 

WITH Dickens' Autograph— Most of Dickens' Novels 

WERE Issued in Shilling Installments before 

BEING Published in the Complete Volume 



Dickens Foremost of Novelists 

is not normal. Older readers will get 
more from the book, but it is doubtful 
whether they will enjoy its rollicking fun 
with so keen a zest. Mr. Pickwick, Sam 
Weller and his father. Bob Sawyer and the 
others, how firmly they are fixed in the 
mind! What real flesh and blood creatures 
they are, despite their creator's exaggera- 
tion of special traits and peculiarities! 

After the Pickwick Papers the choice of 
the most charaderistic of Dickens' novels 
is difficult, but my favorites have always 
been David Copperfield and A 'Tale of 'Two 
Cities^ the one the most spontaneous, the 
freshest in fancy, the most deeply pathetic 
of all Dickens' work; the other absolutely 
unlike anything he ever wrote, but great 
in its intense descriptive passages, which 
make the horrors of the French Revolution 
more real than Carlyle's famous history, 
and in the sublime self-sacrifice of Sidney 
Carton, which Henry Miller, in " The Only 
Way," has impressed on thousands of tear- 
ful playgoers. That David Copperfield is 
not autobiographical we have the positive 
assertion of Charles Dickens the younger, 
yet at the same time every lover of this 
book feels that the boyhood of David repro- 
duces memories of the novelist's childhood 

[53] 



Modern English Books of Power 

and youth, and that from real people and 
real scenes are drawn the humble home and 
the loyal hearts of the Peggottys, the great 
self-sacrifice of Ham, the woes of Little 
Emily and the tragedy of Steerforth's fate. 
One misses much who does not follow the 
chief adlors in this great story, the master- 
piece of Dickens. 

Other fine novels, if you have time for 
them, are Nicholas Nickleby, which broke 
up the unspeakably cruel boarding schools 
for boys in Yorkshire, in one of which poor 
Smike was done to death; or Our Mutual 
Friendyin which Dickens attacked the Eng- 
lish poor laws; or Dombey and Son^ that 
paints the pathos of the child of a rich man 
dying for the love which his father was too 
selfish to give him; or Bleak House^ in 
which the terrible sufferings wrought by 
the law's delay in the Court of Chancery 
are drawn with so much pathos that the 
book served as a valuable aid in removing 
a great public wrong, while the satire on 
foreign missions served to draw the Eng- 
lish nation's attention to the wretched 
heathen at home in the East Side of Lon- 
don, of whom Poor Jo was a pitiable 
specimen. In other novels other good pur- 
poses were also served. 

[54] 



Dickens Foremost of Novelists 

But several pages could be filled with a 
mere enumeration of Dickens* stories and 
their salient features. You cannot go wrong 
in taking up any of his novels or his short 
stories, and when you have finished with 
them you will have the satisfadion of hav- 
ing added to your possessions a number of 
the real people of fidion, whom it is far 
better to know than the best characters of 
contemporary iidlion, because these will be 
forgotten in a twelvemonth, if not before. 
The hours that you spend with Dickens 
will be profitable as well as pleasant, for 
they will leave the memory of a great- 
hearted man who labored through his books 
to make the world better and happier. 



[5S] 



Thackeray 

Greatest Master of 

Fiction 

The Most Accomplished Writer of 
His Century-Tender Pathos Under 
An Affectation of Cynicism and 
Great Art in Style and Characters. 

OF all modern English authors, Thack- 
eray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, 
satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world 
and of the human heart, instindive good 
taste and a style equaled by none of his 
fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and 
winning charm-these are some of the traits 
that make the author of Vanity Fair and 
£j»/(?;/^ incomparably the first literary artist 
as well as the greatest writer of his age. 
Whether he would have been as fine a 
writer had he been given a happy life is a 
question that no one can answer. But to 
my mind it has always seemed as though 
the dark shadow that rested on his domes- 
tic life for thirty years made him infinitely 

[56] 




William Makepeace Thackeray 

From a Drawing by Samuel Laurence, 

Engraved by J. C. Armytage 



Thackeray the Master of Fiction 

tender to the grief and pain of others. 
Probably it came as a shock to most lovers 
of Thackeray to read in a news item from 
London only three or four years ago that 
the widow of Thackeray was dead, at the 
great age of ninety years. She had outlived 
her famous husband nearly a full half cen- 
tury, but of her we had heard nothing in 
all this time. When a beautiful young Irish 
girl she was married to the novelist, and 
she made him an ideal wife for a few years. 
Then her mind give way,and the remainder 
of her long career was spent within the 
walls of a sanatorium-more lost to her 
loved ones than if she had been buried in 
her grave. The knowledge of her existence, 
which was a ghastly death in life, the fad: 
that it prevented him from giving his three 
young girls a real home, as well as barred 
him under the English law from marrying 
again-all these things to Thackeray were 
an ever-present pain, like acid on an open 
wound. It was this sorrow, from which he 
could never escape that gave such exquisite 
tenderness to his pathos; and it was this sor- 
row, ading on one of the most sensitive 
natures, that often sharpened his satire and 
made it merciless when direded against 
the shams and hypocrisies of life. 

[57] 



Modern English Books of Power 

Thackeray's fame rests mainly on two 
great hooiks— Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond, 
The first has been made very real to thou- 
sands of readers by the brilliant adting of 
Mrs. Fiske in Becky Sharp. The other is 
one of the finest historical novels in the 
language and the greatest exploit in bring- 
ing over into our century the style, the 
mode of thought, the very essence of a pre- 
vious age. Thackeray was saturated with 
the literature of the eighteenth century, 
and in Esmond he reproduced the time of 
Addison and Steele as perfectly as he made 
an imitation of a numberof the Spectator. 
This literary tour de force was made the 
more noteworthy by the absolute lack of 
all effort on the novelist's part. The style 
of Queen Anne's age seemed a part of the 
man, not an assumed garment. While in 
the heroine o{ Vanity i^^^/r Thackeray gave 
the world one of the coldest and most 
selfish of women, he atoned for this by 
creating in Esmond the finest gentleman 
in all English literature, with the single 
exception of his own Colonel Newcome. 

Strid: injunctions Thackeray left against 
any regulation biography, and the result 
is that the world knows less of his life 
before fame came to him than it does of 

[58] 



^ 







SMITH ELDER & CO 15 WATERLOO place: 

Title-page to "Vanity Fair'' Drawn by 
Thackeray, who Furnished the Illustrations 

FOR MANY OF HIS EaRLIER EDITIONS 



Thackeray the Master of Fiction 

any other celebrated author of his age. 
The scanty fads show that he was born in 
Calcutta in 1 8 1 1 ; that he was left a fortune 
of I10O5OOO by his father, who died when 
he was five years old; that, like most chil- 
dren of Anglo-Indians, he was sent to 
school in England; that he was prepared for 
college at the old Charter House School; 
that he was graduated from Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge, and that while in college 
he showed much ability as a writer of 
verse and prose, although he took no 
honors and gained no prizes. After reading 
law he was moved to become an artist and 
spent some time in travel on the Continent. 

But this delightful life was rudely cut 
short by the loss of his fortune and he was 
forced to earn his living by literature and 
journalism. Under various pseudonyms he 
soon gained a reputation as a satirist and 
humorist, his first success being I'he Great 
Hoggarty Diamond, Then years of work for 
Punch and other papers followed before 
he won enduring fame by Vanity Fair, 
which he styled "a novel without a hero." 

Charlotte Bronte, who gained a great 
reputation by Jane Eyre, added to Thack- 
eray's vogue by dedicating to him in rarely 
eloquent words the second edition of her 

[59] 



Modern English Books of Power 

novel, against which preachers fulminated 
because of what they called its immoral ten- 
dencies. Then in rapid succession Thack- 
eray wrote Pendennis, Henry Esmond ^ "The 
NewcomeSj T^he Virginians ^ Lovel the Wid- 
ower and T^he Adventures of Philip, All 
these are masterpieces of wit, satire and 
humor, cast in a perfect style that never 
offends the most fastidious taste, yet they 
are negleded to-day mainly because they 
do not furnish exciting incidents. 

Thackeray, like Dickens in his readings, 
made a fortune by his ledures, first on 
"The English Humorists,'' and later on 
"The Four Georges," and, like Dickens, 
he received the heartiest welcome and the 
largest money returns from this country. 

He died alone in his room on Christmas 
eve in the fine new home in London which 
he had recently made for himself and his 
three daughters. 

Thackeray was a giant physically, with 
a mind that worked easily, but he was indo- 
lent and always wrote under pressure, with 
the printer's devil waiting for his "copy." 
He was a thorough man of the world, yet 
full of the freshness of fancy and the tender- 
ness of heart of a little child. All children 
were a delight to him, and he never could 

[60] 



Thackeray the Master of Fiction 

refrain from giving them extravagant tips. 
The ever-present grief that could not be 
forgotten by fame or success made him 
very tender to all suffering, especially the 
suffering of the weak and the helpless. 
Yet, like many a sensitive man, he con- 
cealed this kindness of heart under an 
affedation of cynicism, which led many 
unsympathetic critics to style him hard and 
ferocious in his satire. 

Like Dickens, Thackeray was one of the 
great reporters of his day, with an eye that 
took in unconsciously every detail of face, 
costume or scene and reproduced it with 
perfect accuracy. The reader of his novels is 
entertained by a series of pen pidures of 
men and women and scenes in high life 
and life below stairs that are photographic 
in their clearness and fidelity. Dickens 
always failed when he came to depidl Brit- 
ish aristocratic life; but Thackeray moved 
in drawing-rooms and brilliant assemblages 
with the ease of a man familiar from youth 
with good society, and hence free from all 
embarrassment, even in the presence of 
royalty. 

Thackeray*s early works are written in 
the same perfed, easy, colloquial style, rich 
in natural literary allusions and frequently 

[6i] 



Modern English Books of Power 

rhythmic with poetic feeling, which marked 
his latest novel. He also had perfe6l com- 
mand of slang and the cockney dialed: of 
the Londoner. No greater master of dia- 
logue or narrative ever wrote than he who 
pidured the gradual degradation of Becky 
Sharp or the many self-sacrifices of Henry 
Esmond for the woman that he loved. 

Howells and other critics have censured 
Thackeray severely because of his tendency 
to preach, and also because he regarded his 
characters as puppets and himself as the 
showman who brought out their peculiari- 
ties. There is some ground for this criticism, 
if one regards the art of the novelist as 
centered wholly in realism; but such a hard 
and fast rule would condemn all old English 
noveHsts from Richardson to Thackeray. 

It ought not to disturb any reader that 
Defoe turns aside and gives refledlions on 
the adts of his chara6lers, for these remarks 
are the fruit of his own knowledge of the 
world. In the same way Thackeray keeps 
up a running comment on his men and 
women, and these bits of philosophy make 
his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which 
may be read again and again with great 
profit and pleasure. The modern novel, 
with its comparative lack of thought and 

[62] 




> ^^Sf:'<S-Z\^:yX'Mt^:Aru' ^ 



'""'"^""'^^' 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

A Caricature Drawn 

BY Himself 



Thackeray the Master of Fiction 

feeling, its insistence upon the absolute 
efFacement of the author, is seldom worth 
reading a second time. Not so with Thack- 
eray. Every reading reveals new beauties 
of thought or style. An entire book has 
been made up of brief extrads from Thack- 
eray's novels, and it is an ideal little volume 
for a pocket companion on walks,as Thack- 
eray fits into any mood and always gives one 
material for thought. 

Of all Thackeray's novels Vanity Fair 
is the best known and most popular. It is 
a remarkable picture of a thoroughly hard, 
selfish woman whom even motherhood did 
not soften; but it is something more than 
the chronicle of Becky Sharp's fortunes. 
It is a panoramic sketch of many phases 
of London life; it is the free giving out by 
a great master of fidion of his impressions 
of life. Hence Vanity Fair alone is worth 
a hundred books filled merely with exciting 
adventures, which do not make the reader 
think. The problems that Thackeray pre- 
sents in his masterpiece are those of love, 
duty, self-sacrifice; of high aims and many 
temptations to fall below those aspirations; 
of sordid, selfish life, and of fine, noble, 
generous souls who light up the world and 
make it richer by their presence. 

[63] 



Modern English Books of Power 

Thackeray, in Vanity Fair^ has sixty 
charaders, yet each is drawn sharply and 
clearly, and the whole story moves on with 
the ease of real life. Consummate art is 
shown in the painting of Becky's gradual 
rise to power and the great scene at the 
climax of her success, when Rawdon Craw- 
ley strikes down the Marquis of Steyne, 
is one of the finest in all fiction. Though 
Becky knows that this blow shatters her 
social edifice, she is still woman enough 
to admire her husband in the very ad that 
marks the beginning of the decadence of 
her fortunes. Vanity Fair^ read carefully a 
half-dozen times, is a liberal education in 
life and in the art of the novelist. 

Personally,! r<ink Pen^^ennis next to Van- 
ity Fair for the pleasure to be derived from 
it. From the time when the old Major 
receives the letter from his sister telling 
of young Arthur's infatuation for the cheap 
adress. Miss Fotheringay, the story car- 
ries one along in the leisurely way of the 
last century. All the people are a delight, 
from Captain Costigan to Fowker, and 
from the French chef, who went to the 
piano for stimulus in his culinary work, to 
Blanche Amory and her amazing French 
affedlations. But Pendennis is not popular. 

[64] 



Thackeray the Master of Fiction 

Nor is Henry Esmond popular, although 
it is worthy to rank with 'the Cloister and 
the Hearth^ Adam Bede and Tess of the 
U Urbervilles, There is little relief of hu- 
mor in Esmond^ but the story has a strong 
appeal to any sympathetic reader, and it is 
the one supreme achievement in all fidion 
in which the hero tells his own story. 
Thackeray's art is flawless in this tale, and 
it sometimes rises to great heights, as in 
the scenes following the death of Lord 
Castlewood, the exposure of the Prince's 
perfidy, the selfishness of Beatrice and the 
great sacrifice of Esmond. 

Space is lacking to take up Thackeray's 
other works, but it is safe to say if you 
read the three novels here hastily sketched 
you cannot go amiss among his minor 
works. Even his Hghter sketches and his 
essays will be found full of material that 
is so far above the ordinary level that the 
similar work of to-day seems cheap and 
common. Happy is the boy or girl who 
has made Thackeray a chosen companion 
from childhood. Such a one has received 
unconsciously lessons in life and in culture 
that can be gained from few of the great 
authors of the world. 

[65] 



Charlotte Bronte 

And Her Two Great 

Novels 

'JaneEyre"and"Villette"areTouched 
With Genius—Tragedy of a Woman's 
Life That Resulted in Two Stories 
Of Passionate Revolt Against Fate. 

CHARLOTTE Bronte IS always linked in 
my memory with Thackeray because 
of her visit to the author of Vanity Fair 
and its humorous and pathetic features. 
She went to London from her lonely York- 
shire home, and the great world, with its 
many selfish and unlovely features, made 
a painful impression on her. Even Thack- 
eray, her idol, was found to have feet of 
clay. But this "little Puritan,**as the great 
man called her, was endowed with the 
divine genius which was forced to seek 
expression in fidion, and nowhere in all 
literature will one find an author who shows 
more completely the compelling force of 
a powerful creative imagination than this 

[66] 




/ 



Charlotte Bronte 

From the Exquisitely Sympathetic Crayon 

Portrait by George Richmond, R A 

NOW in the National Portrait 

Gallery of London 



Charlotte Bronte's Great Novels 

little, frail, self-educated woman, who had 
none of the advantages of her fellow wri- 
ters, but who surpassed them all in a 
certain fierce, Celtic spirit which forces the 
reader to follow its bidding. 

He who would get a full realization of 
the importance of this Celtic element in 
English literature cannot afford to negledl 
Jane Eyre and Villettey the best of Char- 
lotte Bronte's works. Old-fashioned these 
romances are in many ways, oversenti- 
mental, in parts poorly constructed, but in 
all English fidion there is nothing to sur- 
pass the opening chapters of Jane Eyre 
for vividness and pathos, and few things 
to equal the greater part of Villettey the 
tragedy of an English woman's life in a 
Brussels boarding school. 

Who can explain the mystery of the 
flowering of a great literary style among 
the bleak and desolate moors of York- 
shire? Who can tell why among three 
daughters of an Irish curate of mediocre 
abiUty but tremendously passionate nature 
one should have developed an abnormal 
imagination that in Wuthering Heights is 
as powerful as Foe's at his best, and another 
should have matured into the ablest woman 
novelist of her day and her generation? 

[67] 



Modern English Books of Power 

These are freaks of heredity which science 
utterly fails to explain. 

Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816 and 
died in 1855. She was one of six children 
who led a curiously forlorn life in the old 
Haworth parsonage in the midst of the 
desolate Yorkshire moors. The outlook on 
one side was upon a gloomy churchyard; 
on the other three sides the eye ranged to 
the horizon over rolling, dreary moorland 
that looked like a heaving ocean under a 
leaden sky. One brother these five sisters 
had, a brilliant but superficial boy, with no 
stable charader, who became a drunkard 
and died after lingering on for years, a 
source of intense shame to his family. The 
girls were left motherless at an early age. 
Four were sent to a boarding school for 
clergymen's daughters, but two died from 
exposure and lack of nutritious food, and 
the others, starved mentally and physically, 
returned to their home. This was the 
school that Charlotte held up to infamy 
in Jane Eyre, 

The three sisters who were left, in the 
order of their ages, were Emily, Charlotte 
and Anne. They, with their brother, lived 
in a kind of dream world. Charlotte was 
the natural story-teller, and she wove end- 

[68] 



Charlotte BrontFs Great Novels 

less romances in which figured the great 
men of history who were her heroes. She 
also told over and over many weird York- 
shire legends. These children devoured 
every bit of printed matter that came to 
the parsonage, and they were as thoroughly 
informed on all political questions as the 
average member of Parliament. 

At an age when normal girls were play- 
ing with their dolls these precocious chil- 
dren were writing poems and stories. Their 
father developed the ways of a recluse 
and never took his meals with his children. 
Living in this dream world of their own, 
these children could not understand nor- 
mal girls. They were terribly unhappy at 
school and came near to death of home- 
sickness. Finally Emily and Charlotte 
found a congenial school and in a few years 
they both made great strides in education. 
Charlotte tried teaching and also the work 
of governess, but finally both decided to 
open a girls* school of their own. To pre- 
pare themselves in French, Emily and 
Charlotte went to a boarding school in 
Brussels. 

This was the turning point in Charlotte's 
life. Intensely ambitious, she worked like 
a galley slave and soon mastered French 

[69] 



Modern English Books of Power 

so that she wrote it with ease and vigor. 
There is no question that she had a girlish 
love for her teacher, as passionate as it was 
brief, and that her whole outlook was 
broadened by this experience of a world so 
unlike the only one that she had known. 

The story of Charlotte's life is told beau- 
tifully by Mrs. Gaskell, the well-known 
author of Cranford, It is one of the finest 
biographies in the language, and also one 
of the most stimulating. The reader who 
follows Charlotte*s stormy youth is made 
ashamed of his own lack of application 
when he reads of the girFs tireless work in 
self-culture in the face of much bodily 
weakness and great unhappiness. 

Read of her experiences in Brussels and 
you will get some idea of the tremendous 
vitality of this frail girl with the luminous 
eyes and the fiery spirit that no labor could 
tire. Mrs. Gaskell has drawn largely upon 
Charlotte's letters, which are as vivid and 
full of charader as any of her fidion. Gen- 
ius flashes from them; one feels drawn very 
close to this woman who raged against her 
physical infirmities, but overcame them 
bravely. When the spirit moved her she 
poured out her soul to her friend in words 
that grip the heart after all these years. 

[70] 



Charlotte Bronte's Great Novels 

The boarding-school projed fell through, 
and for some years the three sisters lived 
at home and devoted themselves to literary- 
work. The first fruits of their pen was a 
small volume of poems by Currer, Ellis 
and Adon Bell, the pseudonyms of Char- 
lotte, Emily and Anne. This book fell 
pradically stillborn from the press, but the 
sisters were undaunted and each began a 
novel. Without experience of life it is not 
strange that these stories lacked merit. 

Charlotte drew her novel from her Brus- 
sels experience and called it T^he Professor, 
Though it was far the best, it was rejeded, 
but Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne*s 
Agnes Gray were published. Emily's novel 
revealed a powerful but ill-regulated imagi- 
nation, with scenes of splendid imaginative 
force, yet morbid and unreal as an opium 
dream. It received some good notices, but 
Anne's was mediocre and fell flat. Noth- 
ing daunted by the refusal of the publishers 
to bring out her first book, Charlotte began 
Jane Eyre, largely autobiographical in the 
early chapters, and this book was promptly 
accepted and published in August, 1847. 

Jane Eyre was a great success from the 
day it came from the press. 1 1 was an epoch- 
making novel because it dragged into the 

[71] 



Modern English Books of Power 

fierce light of publicity many questions 
which the English public of that day had 
decided to leave out of print. To us of 
today it contains nothing unusual, for mod- 
ern women writers have gone far beyond 
Charlotte Bronte in their demands for 
freedom from many stri6t social conven- 
tions. What makes the book valuable is 
the glimpse which it gives of the wild 
revolt of a passionate nature against the 
coldness, the hypocrisy and the many 
shams of the social life of England in the 
middle of the last century. 

This novel is also noteworthy for its 
intense pi dure of the sufferings of a lonely, 
unappreciated girl, who felt in herself the 
stirrings of genius and who hungered and 
thirsted for appreciation. The terrible pic- 
tures of Lowood, the fidlion name of the 
Cowan's Bridge School, where her two sis- 
ters contraded their fatal illness,are stamped 
upon the brain of every reader, as are those 
of the humiliations of the governess. The 
style of this book was a revelation in that 
period of formal writing. Like Stevenson, 
Charlotte Bronte wrought with words as a 
great artist works with his colors, and many 
of her descriptions in Jane Eyre have never 
been surpassed. Hers was that brooding 

[72] 




Mrs. Gaskell 

From the Portrait by George Richmond, R. A. 

Mrs. Gaskell's**Life of Bronte" is one of the 

Finest Biographies in the Language 



Charlotte Bronte's Great Novels 

Celtic imagination which, when given full 
play, takes the reader by the hand and 
shows him the heights and depths of 
human love and suffering. 

The success of Jane Eyre opened wide 
the doors of London to the unknown 
author. For a time her identity was hid- 
den, but when it was revealed she was 
induced to go up to London and see the 
great world. Thackeray was especially kind 
to her, but his efforts to entertain this 
Yorkshire recluse were dismal failures. 
Nothing is more amusing than his daugh- 
ter's story of the great novelist, slipping 
out of the house one night, when he had 
asked several celebrities to meet Charlotte 
Bronte. The party was a terrible fiasco, 
and so he escaped, putting his finger to his 
lips as he opened the front door to warn 
his daughter that she must not reveal his 
flight. Charlotte's correspondence with her 
publisher is also full of pathos. It shows 
how keenly she felt her aloofness from the 
world, which she could not overcome. 

The story of Villette is the real story of 
Charlotte's experiences in a Brussels board- 
ing school, where she first tasted the 
delights of literary study and her genius 
first found adequate expression. The orig- 

[73] 



Modern English Books of Power 

inal draft of this novel was called ^he 
Professor, Charlotte knew that it contained 
good material. So, after the death of her 
sisters, she took up the subjed, and with 
all her mature power produced Villette— 
one of those novels struck off at a white 
heat, like George Sand's Indiana or Bal- 
zac's Seraphita, The story is largely auto- 
biographical, but the episodes of Charlotte's 
life are touched with romance when they 
appear as the experiences of Lucy Snow, 
the forlorn English girl in the Continental 
school, among people of alien natures and 
strange speech. 

In Shir ley y Charlotte Bronte revealed 
much genuine humor in the malicious por- 
traits of the three curates, who were drawn 
from real life. In fadl, throughout her 
books one will find most of the charaders 
sketched from real people. Hence, if one 
reads the story of her life he can trace her 
from her return from her Continental life 
down through the cruel years almost to the 
end. Back she came to her gloomy home 
from Brussels only to watch in succession 
the lingering death of her brother and her 
two sisters. Think of these three sisters, 
two marked for sure and early death, labor- 
ing at literary work every day with the 

[74] 



Charlotte Bronte's Great Novels 

passion and intensity that come to few 
men. Think of Emily, the eldest, with 
fierce pride refusing help to climb the 
steep stairway of the parsonage home when 
her strength was almost spent and her rack- 
ing cough struck cold on the hearts of her 
sisters. And think of Charlotte in her ter- 
rible grief turning to fiction as the only 
resource from unbearable woe and loneli- 
ness. It is one of the great tragedies of 
literature, but out of it came the flowering 
of a brilliant genius. 



[75 J 



George Eliot 

And Her Two Great 

Novels 

"Adam Bede"and"The Mill on the 
Floss"-Her Early Stories Are Rich 
In Character Sketches, With Much 
Pathos and Humor. 

GEORGE Eliot is a novelist in a class by 
herself. She never impressed me as 
a natural story-teller, save when she lived 
over again that happy girlhood which served 
to relieve the sadness of her mature life. 
In parts of Adam Bede and throughout 
^he Mill on the Floss she seems to tell her 
stories as though she really enjoyed the 
work. All the scenes of her beautiful girl- 
hood in the pleasant Warwickshire country, 
when she drove through the pleasant sweet- 
scented lanes and enjoyed the lovely views 
that she has made immortal in her books— 
these she dwelt upon, and with the touch 
of poetry that redeemed the austerity of 
her nature she makes them live again, even 

[76] 




George Eliot in i 864 

From the Etching by Mr. Paul Rajon-Drawn by 

Mr. Frederick Burton— From the Frontispiece 

to the First Edition of "George Eliot's 

Life," by Her Husband, J. W. Cross 



George Eliot's Two Great Novels 

for us in an alien land. So, too, the Eng- 
lish rustics live for us in her pages with 
the same deathless force as the villagers in 
Hardy's novels of Wessex life. And George 
Eliot and Thomas Hardy are the two Eng- 
lish writers who have made these villagers, 
with their peculiar dialed: and their insular 
prejudices, serve the purpose of the Greek 
chorus in warning the reader of the fate 
that hangs over their characters. 

Of all English novelists, George Eliot 
was probably the best equipped in minute 
and accurate scholarship. Trained as few 
college graduates are trained, she was im- 
pelled for several years to take up the study 
of German metaphysics. Her mind, like 
her face, was masculine in its strength, and 
though she suffered in her youth from per- 
sistent ill-health, she conquered this in her 
maturity and wrought with passionate ardor 
at all her literary tasks. So keen was her 
conscience that she often defeated her own 
ends by undue labor, as in the preparation 
for Romola, whose historical background 
swamps the story. 

Above all she was a preacher of a stern 
morality. She laid down the moral law 
that selfishness, like sin, corrodes the best 
nature, and that the only happiness lies 

[77] 



Modern English Books of Power 

in absolute forgetfulness of self and in 
working to make others happy. Thus all 
her books are full of little sermons on life, 
preached with so much force that they 
cannot fail to make a profound impression 
even upon the careless reader. 

George Eliot impresses one as a very 
sad woman, with an eager desire to recap- 
ture the lost religious faith of her happy, 
unquestioning childhood and a still more 
passionate desire to believe in that immor- 
tality which her cold agnostic creed reje<5led 
as illogical. It was pitiful, this strong- 
minded woman reaching out for the things 
that less-endowed women accept without 
question. It was even more pitiful to see 
her, with her keen moral sense, violate all 
the conventions of English law and society 
in order to take up life with the man who 
stimulated her mind and adually made her 
one of the greatest of English novelists. 

Left alone, it is very doubtful whether 
George Eliot ever would have found her- 
self, ever would have developed that mine 
of reminiscence which produced those per- 
fe6l early stories of English country life. 
To George Henry Lewes, the man for 
whose love and companionship she incurred 
social ostracism, readers in aP English- 

[78] 



George Eliot*s Two Great Novels 

speaking countries owe a great debt of grat- 
itude, for it was his wise counsel and his 
constant stimulus and encouragementwhich 
resulted in making George Eliot a writer 
of fine novels instead of an essayist on 
ethical and religious subjects. It detrads 
little from this debt that Lewes was also 
responsible for the stimulus of George 
Eliot's bent toward philosophical specula- 
tion and to that cold if clear scientific 
thought, which spoiled parts of Middle- 
march and ruined Daniel Deronda, 

Marian Evans was born at Ashbury farm 
in Warwickshire in 1 8 1 9 and died in 1 880. 
Her father was the agent for a large estate, 
and the happiest hours of her girlhood 
were spent in driving about the country 
with him. Those keen eyes which saw so 
deeply into human nature were early trained 
to observe all the traits of the English 
rustic, and those childish impressions gave 
vitality to her humorous charaders. Before 
she was ten years old Marian had read Scott 
and Lamb, as well as Pilgrim s Progress and 
Rasselas. When thirteen years old she 
revealed unusual musical gifts. She had 
the misfortune at seventeen to lose her 
mother, and for years after she managed 
her father's house. 

[79] 



Modern ENGLnsH Books of Power 

Evidently the old farmer, whom his 
daughter has sketched with loving hand in 
Adam Bede^ took great pride in the mental 
superiority of his daughter, for he hired 
tutors for her in Latin, Greek, Italian and 
German. All four languages she mastered 
as few college men master them. She read 
everything, both old and new, and her 
intimacy with the wife of Charles Bray of 
Coventry led her to refuse to go to church. 
This free thinking angered her father and 
caused him to demand that she leave his 
house. After three weeks her love and her 
keen sense of duty led her to conform to 
her father's wishes and to resume the 
church-going, which in his eyes was a part 
of life that could not be dropped. 

But that early departure from the estab- 
lished religion carried her into the field of 
German skepticism. She translated Strauss' 
Life of Jesus, For three years her studies 
were interrupted by the serious illness of 
her father. When he died she went to 
Geneva and remained on the Continent a 
year. Then she came home and took up 
her residence with the Brays. The devel- 
opment of her mind was very rapid. She 
served for some time as editor of the 
Westminster Review. She then formed 

[80] 




5g ?o 



O 






?9 O 



George Eliot's Two Great Novels 

a strong friendship with Herbert Spencer, 
and through Spencer she met George 
Henry Lewes, who made a special study 
of Goethe and the German philosophers, 
and who was the editor of the Leader, the 
organ of the Free Thinkers. 

Lewes and Marian Evans soon became 
all the world to each other, but Lewes had 
an insane wife, and the foolish law of Eng- 
land forbade him to get a divorce or to 
marry again. So the two decided to live 
together and to be man and wife in every- 
thing except the sandion of the law. The 
result was disastrous for a time to the 
woman. There is no question that the social 
isolation that resulted hurt her deeply. 
Her close friends like Spencer remained 
loyal, and her husband was always the de- 
voted lover as well as the ideal companion. 

Two years after this new connexion 
Lewes induced his wife to try fidion. Her 
first story was T^he Sad Adventures of the 
Rev, Amos Barton which was followed by 
Janet's Repentance. These stories appeared 
under the pen name of George Eliot, which 
she never relinquished. Gathered into book 
form under the title Scenes From Clerical 
Life, these stories in a minor key made 
a profound impression on Charles Dickens, 

[8i] 



Modern English Books of Power 

who divined they were the work of a woman 
of unusual gifts. 

The praise of Lewes and the apprecia- 
tion of Dickens and other experts gave 
great stimulus to her mind, and she pro- 
duced Adam Bede, perhaps her best work, 
which had a great success. In the follow- 
ing year came The Mill on the Floss^ an 
even greater success. Then in quick suc- 
cession came the other early novels, Silas 
MarneVy Romola and Felix Holt, A break 
of six years follows, and then came Middle- 
march and 'Daniel Deronda, 

Lewes died in 1878, and two years later 
this woman, almost exhausted by her tre- 
mendous literary labors, married J.W.Cross, 
an old friend, but, like Charlotte Bronte, 
she had only short happiness, for she died 
in the following year. The nations praised 
her, but she never recovered from the shock 
of Lewes' death. 

Of George Eliot's work the things that 
impress one most are her fine descriptions 
of natural scenes, her keen analyses of char- 
acter and her many little moral sermons 
on life and condud. With an abnormal 
conscience and a keen sense of duty, life 
proved very hard for her. This is refleded 
in the somberness of her stories and in the 

[82] 



George Eliot's Two Great Novels 

dread atmosphere of fate that hangs over 
her characters. But over against this must 
be placed her joy in depicting the rustic 
character and humor and her delight in 
reproducing the scenes of her childhood 
in one of the most beautiful counties of 
England. 

Herbert Spencer, who was long asso- 
ciated with George Eliot, and for a time 
contemplated the possibility of a union 
with that remarkable woman, pays her a 
high tribute in l^he Study of Sociology, After 
explaining the origin in women of the 
ability to distinguish quickly the passing 
feelings of those around, he says: "Ordi- 
narily, this feminine faculty, showing itself 
in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind 
through the external signs, ends simply 
in intuitions formed without assignable 
reasons; butwhen, as happens in rare cases, 
there is joined with it skill in psychological 
analysis, there results in extremely remark- 
able ability to interpret the mental states 
of others. Of this ability we have a living 
example (George Eliot) never hitherto 
paralleled among women, and in but few, 
if any, cases exceeded among men." 

Perhaps the reader who does not know 
George Eliot would do well to begin with 

[83] 



Modern English Books of Power 

l!he Mill on the Floss^ her finest work, which 
is full of humor, lovely pictures of English 
rural life and an analysis of soul in Maggie 
Tolliver that has never been surpassed. 
Yet the end is cruel and unnatural, as hard 
and as unsatisfying as the author's own 
religious creed. Next read Adam Bede, one 
of the saddest books in all literature, with 
comic relief in Mrs. Poyser, one of the 
most humorous charactersinEnglishfiction. 

George Eliot drew Dinah Morris from 
her favorite aunt, who was a Methodist 
exhorter, and the power and spontaneity 
of this novel came from the sharpness and 
clearness of her early impressions, joined 
to her love of living over again her girl- 
hood days, before doubt had clouded her 
sky. Also read Silas Marner with its per- 
fe6t pidure of Raveloe,"an EngHsh village 
where many of the old echoes lingered, 
undrowned by new voices." These descrip- 
tions are instinct with poetry, and they 
affed: one like Wordsworth's best poems or 
like Tennyson's vignettes of rural life. The 
pale weaver of Raveloe will always remain 
as one of the great characters in English 
fiction. 

Of George Eliot's more elaborate work 
it is impossible to speak in entire praise. 

[84] 



George Eliot's Two Great Novels 

If you have the leisure, and these books 
I have named please you, then by all means 
read Romolay which is a remarkable study 
of the degeneracy of a young Greek and 
of the noble strivings of a great-hearted 
woman. The pictures of Florence in the 
time of Savonarola are splendid, but they 
smell of the lamp. Middlemarch is also 
worth careful study for its fine analysis of 
character and motive. In all George Eliot's 
books her characters develop before our 
eyes, and this is especially true in this elab- 
orate study of the pathos and the tragedy 
of human life. 

George Eliot wrote little poetry, but one 
piece may be commended to careful atten- 
tion, "The Choir Invisible." It sums up 
with impassioned force her ethical creed, 
which she put in these fine lines: 

Oh, may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence: live 

In pulses stirred to generosity. 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end in self. * * 

This is life to come 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony. 



[85] 



Modern English Books of Power 

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love. 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty- 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. 
And in diffusion ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible. 
Whose music is the gladness of the world. 

This was the creed of George Eliot, 
which she preached in her books and which 
she followed in her life. This was the only 
hope of immortality that she cherished-to 
"live again'' in minds that she stimulated. 



[86] 



RUSKIN 

The Apostle of 
Art 

His Work As Art Critic and Social 
Reformer-Best Books Are"Modern 
Painters/*"The Seven Lamps" and 
"The Stones of Venice." 

JohnRuskin deserves a place among the 
great English writers of the last century, 
not only because of his superb style and 
the amount of his work, but because he 
was the first to encourage the study of art 
and nature among the people. So enor- 
mous have been the strides made in the 
last twenty years in popular knowledge of 
art and archite(flure,and so great the growth 
of interest in the beauties of nature that it 
is difficult to appreciate that a little over a 
half century ago, when Ruskin first came 
into prominence as a writer, the English 
public was densely ignorant of art, and was 
equally ignorant of the world of pleasure to 
be derived from beautiful scenery. 

[87] 



Modern English Books of Power 

It was Ruskin's great service to the world 
that he opened the eyes of the public to 
the glories of the art of all countries, and 
that he also revealed the wonders of archi- 
tedlure. Many critics have laid bare his 
infirmities as a critic, but a man of colder 
blood and less emotional nature would 
never have reached the large public to 
which Ruskin appealed. Like a great orator 
he was swayed by the passion of convincing 
his audience, and the very extravagance of 
his language and the ardor of his nature 
served to make a profound impression 
upon readers who are not usually affected 
by such appeals as his. 

Ruskin was one of the most impractical 
men that ever lived, but in the exuberance 
of his nature and in his rare unselfishness 
he started a dozen social reforms in Eng- 
land, any one of which should have given 
fame to its founder. He gave away a great 
fortune in gifts to the public and in private 
generosity. He founded museums, estab- 
hshed scholarships, tried to put into prac- 
tical working order his dream of a New 
Life founded on the union of manual labor 
and high intellectual aims, labored to induce 
the public to read the good old books that 
help one to make life worth living. 

[88] 



John Ruskin 
From a Photograph taken on July 20, 
BY Messrs. Elliott & Fry 



882, 



RusKiN THE Apostle of Art 

That much of his good work was neu- 
tralized by his lack of common sense 
detrads nothing from the world*s debt to 
Ruskin. The simple truth is that he was 
a reformer as well as a great writer, and 
the very fervor of his religious and social 
beliefs, his contempt of mere money get- 
ting, his hatred of falsehood, his boundless 
generosity and his childlike simplicity of 
mind-all these traits at which the world 
laughed lifted Ruskin above the other men 
of genius of his time and placed him among 
the world*s great reformers. 

Among this small body of men whose 
spiritual force continues to live in their 
books or through the influence of their 
great self-sacrificeSjRuskin deserves a place, 
for he gave fortune, work and a splendid 
enthusiasm to the common people's cause. 

Ruskin's whole life was abnormal, and 
his early training served to accentuate those 
weaknesses of mind and will that made 
failures of so many schemes for the public 
good. If Ruskin had been trained in the 
English public schools he would have 
learned common sense in boyhood. As it 
was, his father and mother shielded the 
boy in every way from all contact with the 
world. Ruskin's father was a prosperous 

[89] 



Modern English Books of Power 

wine merchant with much culture; his 
mother was a religious fanatic, whose pas- 
sion for the Bible imposed upon her boy 
the daily reading of the Scriptures and the 
daily memorizing of scores of verses. 

Such training in most cases causes a 
revolt against religion, but in Ruskin's 
case it resulted in training his boyish ear 
to the cadences of the Bible writers and in 
filling his mind with the sublime imagery 
of the prophets, with the result that when 
he began to write he had already formed 
a style, the richest and most varied of the 
last century. 

The boy was a mental prodigy, for he 
taught himself to read when four years old, 
and at five he had devoured hundreds of 
books and was already writing poems and 
plays. At ten, when he had his first tutor, 
his knowledge was wide and he had become 
a passionate lover of natural scenery, as 
well as no mean artist with pen and pencil. 
Scott's novels and Byron's Childe Harold 
formed much of his reading at a time when 
most boys are content with the stories 
of Ballantyne or Mayne Reid. The range 
of his mental activity until he entered 
Oxford at eighteen was very wide. He was 
interested in mineralogy, meteorology, 

[90] 



RusKiN THE Apostle of Art 

mathematics, drawing and painting. What 
probably expanded his mind more than 
all else was the education of travel. His 
father spent about half his time journeying 
through England and the Continent in 
an old-fashioned chaise and John always 
shared in these expeditions. At Oxford 
he competed for the Newdigate prize in 
poetry, and after being twice defeated won 
the coveted honor. He never gained any 
high scholarship, but he received valuable 
training in writing. 

There is no space here to chronicle more 
than a few of his many activities after leav- 
ing college. He first came into prominence 
by his passionate defense of the painter 
Turner against the art critics, and his study 
of Turner led him to adopt art criticism 
as his life work. At twenty-three years of 
age, when most youths are puzzled about 
their vocation, Ruskin had completed the 
first volume of Modern Painters^ the pub- 
lication of which gave him fame and made 
him a social lion in London. Other vol- 
umes of this great work followed swiftly 
and caused a great commotion in the world 
of art and letters because of the radical 
views of the author and the remarkable 
qualities of his style. 

[91] 



Modern English Books of Power 

This was followed by ^he Seven Lamps 
of Archil e^ure, in which Ruskin expounded 
his radical views on this kindred art; The 
Stones of Venice^ an eloquent book enforc- 
ing the argument that Gothic architedlure 
sprang from a pure national faith and the 
domestic virtues; Kings 'Treasuries^ a noble 
plea for good books; Fors Clavigera^ a 
series of ninety-six parts published in eight 
volumes, the record of his social experi- 
ments; Preterit a ^ one of the most charming 
books of youthful reminiscences in any 
language, and many others. Ruskin's men- 
tal adivity was enormous. He had to his 
credit in his fifty-five adive years no less 
than seventy-two volumes and one hundred 
magazine articles, as well as thousands of 
ledures. 

This outline sketch of Ruskin's life 
would be incomplete without mention of 
the great sorrows that darkened his days 
but gave eloquence to his writings. The 
first was the desertion of his wife, who 
married the painter Millais, and the second 
was the loss by death of Rose La Touche, 
a beautiful Irish girl whom he had known 
from childhood. She refused to marry 
him because of their differences of religion; 
even refused to see him in her fatal illness 

[92] 




John Ruskin 

From the Semi- Romantic Portrait by 

Sir John E. Millais 



RusKiN THE Apostle of Art 

unless he could say that he loved God bet- 
ter than he loved her. Her death brought 
bitter despair to Ruskin, but the world 
profited by it, for grief gave his work 
maturity and force. The last ten years of 
Ruskin*s life were spent at his beautiful 
home at Brantwood, surrounded by the 
pidures that he loved and served faithfully 
by devoted relatives. 

Ruskin's books are not to be read con- 
tinuously. Many dreary passages may be 
found in all of them, which the judicious 
reader skips. But his best works are more 
full of intellectual stimulus than those of 
any writer of his time with the single 
exception of Carlyle. Modern Paintersov^r- 
flows with the enthusiasm of a lover of 
art and of nature who preaches the gospel 
of sincerity and truth. It is marked, like all 
his work, by eloquent digressions on human 
life and conduct, for Ruskin held that 
the finest art was simply the flowering of a 
great soul nurtured on all that was highest 
and best, ^he Seven Lamps does for archi- 
tedure what his first work did for painting. 
The book is written in more ornate style 
than any other, but he who loves impas- 
sioned prose will find many specimens here 
that can only by equaled in De Quincey's 

[93] 



Modern English Books of Power 

best work. Read the peroration of the 
"Lamp of Sacrifice" and you will not need 
to be told that this is the finest tribute to 
the work of the builders of the mediaeval 
cathedral. Here is a part of this eloquent 
passage: 

It is to far happier, far higher exaltation that we 
owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged 
with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery^ thicker 
and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer 
dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; 
those window labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry 
light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and 
diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that 
remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else 
for which the builders sacrificed has passed away. * 
* * But of them and their life and their toil upon 
earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those 
great heaps of deep- wrought stone. They have taken 
with them to the grave their powers, their honors and 
their errors; but they have left us their adoration. 

No Space is left here to mention in detail 
Ruskin's other works, but Un^o 'This Last, 
The Stones of Venice, Sesame and Lilies and 
The Crown of Wild Olive may be com- 
mended as well worth careful reading. Also 
Preterita is alive with noble passages, such 
as the pen-pi6lure of the view from the 
Dale in the Alps, or of the Rhone below 
Geneva. Read also Ruskin's description 
of Turner's ^'Slave Ship" or the impressive 

[94] 



RusKiN THE Apostle of Art 

passage on the mental slavery of the modern 
workman in the sixth chapter of the second 
volume of T^he Stones of Venice, Read these 
things and you will have no doubt of the 
genius of Ruskin or of his command of the 
finest impassioned prose in the English 
language. 



[95] 



Tennyson 

Leads the Victorian 

Writers 

The Poet Who Voiced The Aspirations 
Of His Age-"Locksley Hall/' "In 
Memoriam^and "The Idylls of the 
King" Among His Best Works. 

OF all the great English writers of the 
Vidorian age it is probable that the 
next century will give the foremost place 
to Tennyson. Better than any other poet 
of his day, he stands as a type of the Eng- 
lish people in obedience to law, in strong 
religious faith,in splendid imaginative force 
and in a certain unyielding cast of mind 
that made him bide his time during the 
dark years when he was bitterly criticized 
or coldly negleded. Tennyson had to the 
full the poet's temperament, but he had also 
a superb physique, which carried him into 
his eighty-fourth year. From a boy he was 
a lover of nature, and in nearly every poem 
that he wrote are found many proofs of his 

[96] 




Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

After an Engraving by G. J. Stodart from a 

Photograph by J. Mayall 



Tennyson Leads Victorian Writers 

close observation in English woods and 
fields. Through a period of general skep- 
ticism he kept unimpaired his strong faith 
in God and in immortality that lends so 
much force to his best verse. 

Tennyson*s genius found its natural 
expression in verse, and it is his distinction 
that while he explored many realms of 
thought he was always clear and always 
musical. Browning had more passion, but it 
was the misfortune of the author of 'The 
Ring and the Book that he could not refrain 
from a cramped and obscure style of verse 
that makes much of his work very hard 
reading. Many Browning societies have 
been formed to study the works of the 
poet whom they are proud to call master; 
but Tennyson needs no societies, as the 
man in the street and the woman whose 
soul is troubled can understand every line 
he has written. Nor is Tennyson lacking 
in passion, as any one may see by reading 
Locksley Hall or Maud, 

Tennyson summed up in his poetry all 
the spiritual aspiration and the eager search 
for knowledge of his time. He explored 
all domains of thought, and he enriched 
his verse with the fruit of his studies. All 
the great elemental forces are found in his 

[97] 



Modern English Books of Power 

poems: he is the laureate of love and sor- 
row, of grief and aspiration. Throughout 
his verse runs the great natural law that 
the man who is not pure in heart can never 
see the glory of the poet's vision. 

The purity of his own life was refleded 
in his verse, just as the mad license and the 
furious self-indulgence of Byron are mir- 
rored in Don Juan, Manfred and Cain, 
Even to extreme old age Tennyson pre- 
served that high poetic faculty which he 
manifested in early youth. One of his lat- 
est poems. Crossing the Bar, is also one of 
the finest in the language, breathing the 
old man's assurance of a life beyond the 
grave and a reunion with the dear friend of 
his youth, whom he mourned and immor- 
talized in In Memoriam, 

Alfred Tennyson had one of the finest 
lives in the roll of English authors. He was 
born in 1 809 and lived to 1892. He spent 
his early years in one of the most beautiful 
parts of Lincolnshire. He enjoyed the 
personal training of his father, a very ac- 
complished clergyman, and much of his 
boyhood and youth was spent in the open 
air. In this way he absorbed that knowl- 
edge of birds and animals, trees and flowers 
and all the aspeds of nature which is 

[98] 



Tennyson Leads Victorian Writers 

refleded in his verse. As a youth he 
experimented in many styles of verse, and 
when only eighteen he issued, with his 
brother Charles, Poems by T^wo Brothers, 
The next year he and Charles entered 
Trinity College, Cambridge. There they 
received the greatest impulse toward cul- 
ture in a society of undergraduates known 
asthe"Apostles." Its membership included 
Thackeray, Trench, Spedding, Monckton 
Milnes and Alfred and Arthur Henry 
Hallam, sons of the famous author of 
"the Middle Ages, 

In his second year at college Tennyson 
won the Chancellor's gold medal with his 
prize poem, I'imbuctoOy and in the following 
year he published his first volume, Poems, 
Chiefly Lyrical. He left college without a 
degree, and in 1 833 he issued another vol- 
ume of poems which contained some of his 
best work-T'/^(? Lady of Shalott, The Lotos 
Eaters, The Palace of Art and A Dream of 
Fair Women. Any one of these poems if 
issued to-day would make the reputation 
of a poet, but this book made little im- 
pression on the Vidorian public which had 
lost its taste for poetry and was devoted 
mainly to prose iidion. The world has yet 
to catch the note of this master singer. 

[99] 



Modern English Books of Power 

In 1837 Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's 
friend and other self, the one man who 
predidled that he would be the greatest 
poet of his age, died suddenly in Vienna 
while traveling abroad. The shock made 
a profound impression on Tennyson. For 
ten years he put forth no work. Finally, 
in 1842, he issued two volumes of poems 
that at once caught the public fancy. 
Among the poems that brought him fame 
were Locks ley Hall^ Lady Godiva^ UlysseSy 
'^he 'Two Voices and Morte d' Arthur, The 
latter was the seed of the splendid Idylls 
of the King, Five years later he published 
The Princess^ with its beautiful songs, and 
three years after In Memoriam the greatest 
elegiac poem in the language, in which he 
lamented the fate of Arthur Hallam and 
poured forth his own grief over this irrep- 
arable loss. In the same year he married 
Miss Emily Sellwood, who made his home 
a haven of rest and of whom he once said 
that with her "the peace of God came into 
my life.'* 

Maudy his most dramatic poem, was 
issued in 1855. ^^ early as 1859 he pub- 
lished the first part of The Idylls of the 
Kingyhut it was not until 1872 that the 
complete sequence of the Idylls was given 

[100] 



Urf^ i}^ fh 



fl^. 



^h^ /^ 1tfuu U nc ^myf^ (^ /X^ ira^^ 

"JU^^ Ji^AX^ h^^_ ^ 

**^ «^ fut iti. eU/)^; 






Facsimile of 

Tennyson's Original Manuscript of 

** Crossing the Bar" 

Copyright by The Macmillan Company 



Tennyson Leads Victorian Writers 

to the public. These Arthurian legends 
are cast by Tennyson in his most musical 
blank verse, and he has given to them a 
tinge of mysticism that seems to lift them 
above the everyday world into a realm of 
pure romance and chivalry. 

Enoch Arden^ a domestic idyl, written in 
1 864, made a great hit. It was followed by 
several plays-^z/^^« Mary^ Harold^ Becket 
and others— all finely written, but none 
appealing to the great public. Up to his 
last years Tennyson remained the real 
laureate of his people, his words always 
tinged with the fire of inspiration. Only 
three years before his death he wrote 
Crossing the Bar, a poem which met with 
instant response from the English-speaking 
world because of its signs of courage in the 
face of death and its proofs of steadfast 
faith in the life beyond the grave. 

No adequate estimate of Tennyson's 
work can be made in the small space 
allotted to this article. All that can be done 
is to mention a few of his best works and 
to quote a few of his stirring lines. If the 
reader will study these poems he will be 
pretty sure to read more of Tennyson. To 
my mind, Locksley Hall is Tennyson's fin- 
est poem, as true to-day as when it was 

[lOl] 



Modern English Books of Power 

written seventy years ago. The long, roll- 
ing, trochaic verse, like the billows on the 
coast that it pi6lures, suits the thought. 
The poem is the passionate lament of a 
returned soldier from India over the mer- 
cenary marriage of the cousin whom he 
loved. Here are a few of the lines that 
will never die: 

Many a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through 

the mellow shade. 
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver 

braid. 
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all 

the chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in 

music out of sight. 
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest 

Nature's rule ! 
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd fore- 
head of a fool ! 
Comfort? Comfort scorn' d of devils! this is truth 

the poet sings. 
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering 

happier things. 
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that 

Honor feels. 
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each 

other's heels. 
Mated with a squalid savage— what to me were sun 

or clime? 
I the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of 

time. 



[102] 



Tennyson Leads Victorian Writers 

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, for- 
ward, let us range, 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringmg 
grooves of change. 

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the 
younger day : 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of 
Cathay. 

It would be difficult among the poets of 
the last century to parallel these passages 
for their imaginative sweep and magnetic 
appeal to the reader. The new criticism 
thatdisparagesTennyson and raises Brown- 
ing to the seventh heaven calls Locksley 
Hall old-fashioned and sentimental, but to 
me it is the greatest poem of its age. Next 
to this I would place In Memoriam^ which 
has never received its just recognition. 
Readers of Taine will recall his flippant 
Gaelic comment on Tennyson's conven- 
tional but cold words of lament. Nothing, 
it seems to me, is further from the truth. 
The many beautiful lines in the poem 
depidl the changing moods of the man who 
mourned for his dead and finally found 
comfort in the words of the Bible— the only 
source of comfort in this world for the 
sorely wounded heart. The whole poem, 
as his son Hallam says, emphasizes the 
poet's belief"in an omnipotent and all- 



[i°3] 



Modern English Books of Power 

loving God, who has revealed himself 
through the highest self-sacrificing love 
in the freedom of the human will and in 
the immortality of the soul." 

The meter of In Memoriam serves to 
fix the poem in the memory. It seems to 
fit the thought with perfedl naturalness. 
It is not strange that Queen Vidloria should 
have placed this poem next to the Bible 
as a means of comfort after the loss of her 
husband, whom she loved so dearly that 
all the attradlions of power and wealth 
never made her forget him a single day. 

ne Idylls of the King are also unappreci- 
ated in these days, yet they contain a body 
of splendid poetry that cannot be dupli- 
cated. They represent the author's dreams 
from early youth, when his imagination 
was first fired by old Malory's chronicle 
of the good King Arthur. They breathe 
a chivalry as lofty as Sidney's, and they 
teach many ethical lessons that it would do 
the present-day world good to take to heart. 
These noble poems, cast in the most musi- 
cal blank verse in our literature, were the 
work of thirty years, written only when 
the poet felt genuine inspiration. They 
represent, as the poet told his son, "the 
dream of a man coming into pradical life 

[104] 



Tennyson Leads Victorian Writers 

and ruined by one sin. It is not the history 
of one man or of one generation, but of a 
whole cycle of generations." And the old 
poet added these fine words: "Poetry is like 
shot silk with many glancing colors. Every 
reader must find his own interpretation 
according to his ability and according to 
his sympathy with the poet." 

Other fine poems of Tennyson which 
one should read are the noble Ode on the 
Death of the Duke of Wellington^ Breaks 
Breaks Breaks the perfed: songs in 'The Prin- 
cesSy and Crossing the Bar, If you read these 
aright you will wish to know more of Ten- 
nyson, the poet who reconciled science and 
religion and kept his old faith strong to 
the end. 



[105] 



Browning 

Greatest Poet Since 

Shakespeare 

How TO Get the Best of Browning's 
Poems-Read the Lyrics First and 
Then Take Up the Longer and the 
More Difficult Works. 

The greatest of English poets since 
Shakespeare, is the title given to 
Robert Browning by many admirers of rec- 
ognized ability as critics. For his dramatic 
force and his insight into human nature 
there is no question that Browning deserves 
this high rank. In these two qualities he 
stands above Tennyson. But a large part 
of his work is written in a style so crabbed 
that it ads as a bar to one's enjoyment of 
many fine poems. Only the most resolute 
reader can go through Sordello or T^he Ring 
and the Book^ the latter, with its intermin- 
able discussions of motive and its curious 
descriptions of half-forgotten legal and 
church methods of the seventeenth cen- 

[io6] 




Robert Browning 

From a Photograph by Hollyer after the 

Portrait by G. F. Watts, R. A. 



Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare 

tury. If one-half this long poem of over 
twenty thousand lines had been cut out, it 
would have been vastly improved. 

The advocates of Browning hold that 
the study of the poet*s obscurities is good 
mental discipline, but I am of the belief 
that poetry, like music, should not demand 
too great exertion of the mind to appreciate 
its beauty. Wagner*s "Seigfried" and "Par- 
sifal" are altogether too long to be enjoyed 
thoroughly. The composer would have 
done well to eliminate a third of each, for 
as they are produced they strain the atten- 
tion to the point of fatigue, and no work 
of art should ever tire its admirers. 

In the same way Browning offends against 
this primal canon of art. A man who was 
capable of writing the most melodious verse, 
as is shown in some of his lyrics, he refused 
to put his thoughts in simple form, and 
often clothed them in obscurity. The result 
is that the great public which would have 
enjoyed his studies of character and his 
powerful dramatic faculty is repelled at the 
outset by the difficulties of understanding 
his poems. Browning added to this obscur- 
ity by constant reference to little-known 
authors. This was not pedantry, any more 
than Milton*s use of classic mythology 

[107] 



Modern English Books of Power 

was pedantry. Both men possessed unusual 
knowledge of rare books, and both were 
much given to quoting authors who are 
unknown to the general reading public. 

But with all these difficulties in the way, 
there still remains a body of verse in Brown- 
ing's work which will richly repay any 
reader. The lyrics and short poems like 
'fhe Pied Piper of Hameliny Pippa Passes, 
Prospice, O Lyric Love, 'The Last Ride, One 
Word More, How 'They Brought the Good 
News,Herve Kiel, the epilogue to A solando, 
The Lost Leader, Men and Women, and A 
Soul's Tragedy will give any reader a taste 
of the real Browning. If you like these 
poems, then try the more ambitious poems 
like A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, The Inn Album, 
Fifine at the Fair and others. 

Browning, above all other English poets, 
seems to have had the power of seizing 
upon a charader at a crucial hour in life 
and laying bare all the impulses that im- 
pel one to high achievement or great self- 
sacrifice. He seems always to have worked 
at the highest emotional stress, so that his 
words are surcharged with feeling. In many 
of his poems this emotional element is 
painful in its intensity. Charadler to him 
was the main feature, and his seledions 

[io8] 



Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare 

comprise some of the most pi6hiresque in 
all history. That he was able to make 
these people live and move and impress 
us as real flesh-and-blood human beings 
shows the great creative power of the man, 
who ought to have written some of the 
world's finest plays. 

Robert Browning was born in 1812 and 
died in 1889. His father, though a clerk 
in the Bank of England, was a fine classical 
scholar and had dabbled in verse. His 
mother was an accomplished musician. 
Browning had every early advantage, and 
while still a lad he came under the spell of 
Byron and had his poetical faculty greatly 
stimulated by the "Napoleon of rhyme." 
Then came Shelley and Keats, and their 
influence set him upon the course which he 
followed for many years. His first poem 
was Pauline^ which has passages of rare 
beauty set among dreary commonplaces. 
He followed this with Paracelsus and Straf- 
ybr^, which opened to him the doors of all 
London salons and made his reputation. 
Sordello^ one of his most difficult poems, 
came next, but he varied these dramatic 
tragedies with a series of short poems called 
Bells and Pomegranates, In this the finest 
thing was Pippa Passes, which was warmly 

[109] 



Modern English Books o> Power 

praised by Elizabeth Barrett, who after- 
wards became his wife. Among the many- 
poems that Browning produced in five 
years were Colombe's Birthday, A Blot in the 
^Scutcheon, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 
and A Soul's tragedy. 

Browning, in 1 846, married Elizabeth 
Barrett, the author of Lady Geraldine's 
Courtship and other poems, a woman who 
had been an invalid, confined to her room 
for years. Love gave her strength to arise 
and walk, and love also gave her the cour- 
age to defy the foolish tyranny of her father 
and elope with Browning. What kind of 
man that father was may be seen in his 
comment after the marriage: "I've no ob- 
jedion to the young man, but my daughter 
should have been thinking of another 
world." They went to Italy, where for fif- 
teen years they made an ideal home. Mrs. 
Browning's story of her love is seen in Son- 
nets From the Portuguese, and some of her 
finest work is in Casa Guidi Windows, Each 
stimulated the other, while there was a 
notable absence of that jealousy which has 
often served to turn the love of literary 
men and women into the fiercest hatred. 

Mrs. Browning died suddenly in 1861, 
and the poet for some time was stunned 

[no] 




Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

After the Portrait by 

Field Talfourd 



Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare 

by this unlooked-for calamity. He spent 
two years in seclusion at work on poems, 
but then he gathered up his courage and 
once more took his old place in the social 
life of London. In Prospice and One IVord 
More, written in the autumn following his 
wife's death, he shows that he has over- 
come all doubts of the reaHty of immor- 
tality. These two poems alone would 
entitle Browning to the highest place among 
the world's great poets. In addition he 
wrote the memorial to his wife, O Lyric 
Love, that is the cry of the soul left here 
on this earth to the soul of the beloved in 
Paradise. To the sympathetic this poem, 
with its solemn rhythm, will appeal like 
splendid organ music. 

Among Browning's other poems that 
are noteworthy are Fifine at the Fair, Red 
Cotton Nightcap Country, ^he Inn Album 
and Dramatic Idyls. Browning's last poem, 
y:/jd?^2«<^o, appeared in London on the same 
day that its author died at Venice. As the 
great bell of San Marco struck ten in the 
evening. Browning, as he lay in bed, asked 
his son if there were any news of the new 
volume. A telegram was read saying the 
book was well received. The aged poet 
smiled and breathed his last. 

[Ill] 



Modern English Books of Power 

In beginning the reading of Browning 
it is well to understand that at least half 
or maybe two-thirds of his work should be 
discarded at the outset, as it is of interest 
only to scholars. My suggestion to one 
who would learn to love Browning is to 
get a little book, Lyrical Poems of Robert 
Brownings by Dr. A. J. George. The editor 
in a preface indicates the best work of 
Browning, and also brings out strongly 
the fa6t that readers, and especially young 
readers, must be given poems which inter- 
est them. His seledions of lyrics have been 
made from this standpoint, and his notes 
will be found very helpful. He develops the 
point that Browning's great revelation to 
the world through his poems was his strong 
and abiding assurance that man has in him 
the principle of divinity, and that many of 
the experiences that the world calls failures 
are really the stepping stones of the ascent 
to that conquest of self and that develop- 
ment of the whole nature which means the 
highest life. He says also that Browning 
is one of the most eloquent expounders 
of the dodrine of the reality of a future 
life, in which those who live a noble and 
unselfish life will get their reward in an 
existence free from all physical ills. 

[112] 



Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare 

In this little book will be found Pippa 
P asses y a noble series of lyrics, which devel- 
ops the idea of the silent influence of a 
little silk weaver of Asolo upon four sets 
of people in the great crises of their lives. 
In each episode Pippa sings a song that 
awakens remorse or kindles manhood or 
arouses patriotism or duty. It is a perfed: 
poem. Among other lyrics given here are 
Evelyn Hope^ which must be bracketed with 
Burns* 'To Mary in Heaven or with Words- 
worth's Lucy and Prospice, which sounds 
the note of deep personal love that is as 
sure of immortality as of life. It is as 
beautiful and as inspiring as Tennyson's 
Crossing the Bar, Other poems due to 
Browning's love for his wife are My Star 
and One Word More, 

If these lyrics appeal to you, then take 
up some of Browning's longer poems, A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon^ Colombe s Birthday^ 
A SouV s Tragedy^ Fra Lippo Lippi and 
Rabbi Ben Ezra, Very few readers in these 
days have time or patience to read The 
Ring and the Book, but it will repay your 
attention, as it is the most remarkable 
attempt in all literature to revive the trag- 
edy of the great and innocent love of a 
woman and a priest. 

["3] 



Modern English Books of Power 

Among the many fine passages in Brown- 
ing, I think there is nothing which equals 
these lines in O Lyric Love, the beautiful 
invocation to his wife: 

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird 
And all a wonder and a wild desire- 
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun. 
Took sanctuary within the holier blue 
And sang a kindred soul out to his face- 
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! 
Never may I commence my song, my due 
To God who best taught song by gift of thee. 
Except with bent head and beseeching hand- 
That shall despite the distance and the dark. 
What was, again may be j some interchange 
Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought. 
Some benediction anciently thy smile. 

The songs in Pippa Passes should be 
read, as they are as near perfed: as Shake- 
speare's songs or the songs of Tennyson 
in The Princess, 



["4] 



Meredith 

And a Few of His 

Best Novels 

One of the Greatest Masters of Fic- 
tion OF Last Century-"The Ordeal 
OF Richard Feverel" "Diana of the 
Crossways"and Other Novels. 

GEORGE Meredith is acknowledged by 
the best critics to be among the great- 
est English novelists of the last century; 
yet to the general reader he is only a name. 
Like Henry James, he is barred off from 
popular appreciation by a style which is 
"caviare to the general." Thomas Hardy 
is recognized as the finest living English 
novelist, but there is very little comparison 
between himself and Meredith. Professor 
William Lyon Phelps, who is one of the 
best and sanest of American critics, says 
they are both pagans, but Meredith was 
an optimist, while Hardy is a pessimist. 
Then he adds this illuminating comment: 
"Mr. Hardy is a great novelist; whereas, 

["5] 



Modern English Books of Power 

to adapt a phrase that Arnold applied to 
Emerson, I should say that Mr. Meredith 
was not a great novelist; he was a great 
man who wrote novels." 

It is only within the last twenty-five 
years that Meredith has had any vogue in 
this country. At that time a good edition 
of his novels was issued, and critics gave 
the volumes generous mention in the lead- 
ing magazines and newspapers. But the 
public did not respond with any cordiality. 
The novel with us has come to be looked 
upon mainly as a source of amusement, 
and a writer of fidion who demands too 
keen attention from his readers can never 
hope to be popular. Meredith, as Profes- 
sor Phelps says, was a great man who, 
among other intelledual adivities, wrote 
some good novels. Doubtless he did more 
real good to literature as the inspirer of 
other writers than he did with his books. 
For more than the ordinary working years 
of most men he was one of the chief "read- 
ers*' for a large London publishing house. 
To hini were submitted the manuscripts of 
new npvels, and it was his privilege to 
recognize the genius of Thomas Hardy, of 
the author of^he Story of an African Farm 
and other now famous English novelists. 

[ii6] 



Meredith and His Best Novels 

Meredith was a singularly acute critic of 
the work of others, but when he came to 
write himself he cast his thoughts in a style 
that has been the despair of many admir- 
ers. In this he resembled Browning, who 
never would write verse that was easy read- 
ing. Meredith*s thought is usually clear, 
yet his brilliant but erratic mind was im- 
pelled to clothe this thought in the most 
bizarre garments. Literary paradox he 
loved; his mind turned naturally to meta- 
phor, and despite the protests of his closest 
friends he continued to puzzle and exas- 
perate the public. He who could have 
written the greatest novels of his age merely 
wrote stories which serve to illustrate his 
theories of life and condud. No man ever 
put more real thought into novels than he; 
none had a finer eye for the beauties of 
nature or the development of character. 
But he had no patience to develop his 
men and women in the clear, orthodox way. 
He imagined that the ordinary reader 
could follow his lightning flashes of illu- 
mination, his piling up of metaphor on 
metaphor, and the result is that many 
are discouraged by his methods, just as 
nine readers out of ten are wearied when 
they attempt to read Browning's longer 



Modern English Books of Power 

poems. His kinship to Browning is strong 
in style and in method of thought, in his 
way of leaping from one conclusion to 
another, in his elimination of all the usual 
small conned:ing words and in his liberties 
with the language. He seemed to be writ- 
ing for himself, not for the general public, 
and he never took into account the slower 
mental processes of those not endowed 
with his own vivid imagination. 

Meredith's life was that of a scholar; it 
contained few exciting episodes. He was 
of Welsh and Irish stock. At an early age 
he was sent to Germany, where he remained 
at a Moravian school until he was fifteen. 
He then returned to England to study 
law, but he never pradliced it. For a num- 
ber of years he was a regular contributor 
to the London Morning Post, and in 
1866 he aded as correspondent during the 
Austro-Italian war. For many years he 
served as chief reader and literary adviser 
to Chapman & Hall, the English pub- 
lishers, and in that capacity he showed an 
insight that led to the development of 
many authors whose first work was crude 
and unpromising. Meredith himself began 
his literary career with l!he Shaving of Shag- 
fat^ a series of Oriental tales the central 

[118] 




George Meredith with His Daughter and 

Grandchildren— From a Photograph 

Taken Shortly Before His 

Death 



Meredith and His Best Novels 

idea of which is the overcoming of estab- 
lished evil. Shagpat stands for any evil or 
superstition, and Shibli Bagarag, the hero, 
is the reformer. This book, with its wealth 
of metaphor, opened the door for Mere- 
dith, but he did not score a success until 
he wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverely 
two years later. Despite its faults, this is 
his greatest book, and it is the one which 
readers should begin with. It is overloaded 
with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's 
Scrip,**which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, 
the father of Richard. The boy is trained 
to cut women out of his life, and just when 
the father's theory seems to have succeeded 
Richard meets and falls in love with Lucy, 
and the whole towering strudure founded 
on the "Pilgrim's Scrip" falls into ruin. The 
scene in which Richard and Lucy meet is 
one of the great scenes in English fidlion, 
in which Meredith's passionate love of 
nature serves to bring out the natural love 
of the two young people. Earth was all 
greenness in the eyes of these two lovers, 
and nature served only to deepen the love 
that they saw in each other's gaze and felt 
with thrilling force in each other's kisses. 
But even stronger that this scene is that 
last terrible chapter, in which Richard 

["9] 



Modern English Books of Power 

returns to his home and refuses to stay 
withLucy and her child. Stevenson declared 
that this parting scene was the strongest 
bit of English since Shakespeare. It cer- 
tainly reaches great heights of exaltation, 
and in its simplicity it reveals what miracles 
Meredith could work when he allowed his 
creative imagination full play. 

Another story which is usually bracketed 
with this is Diana of the Cross ways. This 
great novel was founded on a real incident 
in English history of Meredith's time. 
Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline 
Norton, one of the three beautiful and bril- 
liant granddaughters of Sheridan, author 
of "The School for Scandal, Her marriage 
was disastrous, and her husband accused 
her of infidelity with Lord Melbourne, 
Prime Minister at the time. His divorce 
suit caused a great scandal, but it resulted 
in her vindication. Then later she was 
accused of betraying to a writer on the 
Times the secret that Sir Robert Peel had 
decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret 
had been confided to her by Sidney Her- 
bert,one of her admirers. Meredith's novel, 
in which the results of Diana's treachery 
were brought out, resulted in a public 
inquiry into the charge against Caroline 

[120] 




Flint Cottage, Boxhill, the Home of George 

Meredith— His Writing was done in 
N A Small Swiss Chalet in 

the Garden 



Meredith and His Best Novels 

Norton, which found that she was inno- 
cent. But the fad: that Meredith used such 
an incident as the climax of his story gave 
Diana of the Crossways an enormous vogue, 
and did much to bring the novelist into 
public favor. 

No more brilliant woman than Diana 
has ever been drawn by Meredith, but 
despite the art of her creator it is impos- 
sible for the reader to imagine her selling 
for money a great party secret which had 
been whispered to her by the man she 
loved. She was too keen a woman to plead, 
as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize 
the importance of this secret, for the de- 
fense is cut away by her admission that she 
was promised thousands of pounds by the 
newspaperman at the very time that her 
extravagances had loaded her with debts. 

Space is lacking here to do more than 
mention three or four of Meredith^s other 
novels that are fine works of art. These 
are Rhoda Fleming, Sandra Belloni, Evan 
Harrington and 'The Egoist, Each is a mas- 
terpiece in its way; each is full of human 
passion, yet tinged with a philosophy that 
lifts up the novels to what Meredith him- 
self called "honorable fidion, a fount of 
life, an aid to life, quick with our blood." 

[I2l] 



Modern English Books of Power 

The novel to him was a means of showing 
man's spiritual nature,"a soul born adive, 
wind-beaten, but ascending/' 

A score of novels Meredith wrote in his 
long life. The work of his later years was 
not happy. T^he Amazing Marriage and 
Lord Ormont and His Aminta are mere 
shadows of his earlier work, with all his 
old mannerisms intensified. But if you like 
Richard and Diana, then you can enlarge 
your acquaintance with Meredith to your 
own exceeding profit, for he is one of the 
great masters of fidion, who used the novel 
merely to preach his do<5trine of the rich- 
ness and fulness of human life if we would 
but see it with his eyes. 



[122] 



Stevenson 

Prince of Modern 

Story-Tellers 

His Stories of Adventure and His 
Brilliant Essays-"Treasure Island'* 
And"Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde" His 
Most Popular Books. 

IT is as difficult to criticise the work of 
Robert Louis Stevenson as it is to find 
faults in the friend that you love as a 
brother. For with all his faults, this young 
Scotchman with his appealing charm dis- 
arms criticism. Nowhere in all literature 
may one find his like for warming the heart 
unless it be Charles Lamb, of gracious 
memory, and the secret of this charm is 
that Stevenson remained a child to the end 
of his days, with all a child's eagerness for 
love and praise, and with all a child's pas- 
sion for making believe that his puppets 
are real flesh and blood people. When 
such a nature is endowed with consummate 
skill in the use of words, then one gets the 
finest, if not the greatest, of creative artists. 



Modern English Books of Power 

In sheer technical skill Stevenson stands 
head and shoulders above all the other 
literary craftsmen of his day; but this skill 
was not used to refine his meaning until 
it wearied the reader, as in the case of Henry 
James, nor was it used to bewilder him 
with the richness of his resources, as was 
too often the case with George Meredith. 
With Stevenson, style had adlually become 
the man; he could not write the simplest 
article in any other than a highly finished 
literary way. Witness the amazingly elo- 
quent defense of Father Damien which he 
dashed off in a few hours and read to his 
wife and his stepson before the ink was dry 
on the sheets. 

Above all other things Stevenson was a 
great natural story-teller. With him the 
story was the main consideration, yet in 
some of his short tales such as Markheiniy 
or A Lodging for the Night , or ^he Sire de 
Maletroifs Door, the story itself merely 
serves as a thread upon which he has strung 
the most remarkable analysis of a man's 
soul. He has the distindlion of having 
written in Treasure Island the best piratical 
story of the last century. If he could have 
maintained the high level of the opening 
chapter he would have produced a work 

[124] 



Prince of Modern Story-Tellers 

worthy to rank with Robinson Crusoe, As 
it is, he created two villains, the blind man 
Pew and John Silver, who are absolutely 
unique in literature. The blind pirate in 
his malevolent fury is a creature that chills 
the heart, while Silver is a cheerful villain 
who murders with a smile. In Dr. Jekyll 
and Mr. Hyde Stevenson has aroused that 
sense of mystery and horror which springs 
from the spedacle of the domination of an 
evil spirit over a nature essentially kind 
and good. 

Stevenson came of a race of Scotch men 
of affairs. His grandfather was the most 
distinguished lighthouse builder of his day 
and his father gained prominence in the 
same work that demands the highest engi- 
neering skill with great executive capacity. 
Stevenson himself would have been an 
explorer or a soldier of fortune had he been 
born with the physical strength to fit his 
mental endowments. His childhood was so 
full of sickness that it reads Hke a hospital 
report. His life was probably preserved 
by the assiduous care and rare devotion of 
an old Scotch nurse, Alison Cunningham, 
whom he has immortalized in his letters 
and in his A Child's Garden of Verse. The 
sickly boy was an eager reader of every- 



Modern English Books of Power 

thing that fell in his way in romance and 
poetry. Later he devoted himself to sys- 
tematic training of his powers of observation 
and his great capacity for expressing his 
thoughts. 

His youth was spent in migrations to 
the south in winter and in efforts to thrive 
in Scotland's dour climate in the summer. 
His school training was fitful and brief, 
but from the age of ten the boy had been 
training himself in the field which he felt 
was to be his own. His first literary work 
was essays and descriptive sketches for the 
magazines. Then came short stories in 
which he revealed great capacity. Recog- 
nition came very slowly. He was compara- 
tively unknown after he had produced such 
charming work as An Inland Voyage and 
"Travels With a 'Donkey^ not to mention the 
New Arabian Nights. Popularity came 
with Treasure Island^ written as a story for 
boys, and the one work of Stevenson's in 
which his creative imagination does not 
flag toward the end; but fame came only 
after the writing of The Strange Case of Dr, 
Jekyll and Mr, Hyde-thc most remarkable 
story of a dual personality produced in the 
last century. After this he wrote a long 
succession of stories, not one of which can 

[126] 



Prince of Modern Story-Tellers 

be called a masterpiece because of the 
author's inability to finish his novels as he 
planned them. Lack of patience or want 
of sustained creative power invariably made 
him cut short his novels or end them in a 
way that exasperates the reader. 

Some months Stevenson spent in Califor- 
nia, but this State, with its romantic history 
and its singular scenic beauty, appeared to 
have little influence on his genius. In fad, 
locality seemed not to color the work of 
his imagination. His closing years were 
spent in Somoa, a South Sea Island para- 
dise, in which he reveled in the primitive 
conditions of life and recovered much of 
his early zest in physical life. Yet his best 
work in those last years dealt not with the 
palm-fringed atolls of the Pacific, but with 
the bleak Scotch moors which refused him 
a home. In his letters he dwells on the 
curious obsession of his imagination by 
old Scotch scenes and characters, and on 
the day of his death he didated a chapter 
of Weir of Hermiston^ a romance of the 
piduresque period of Scotland which had 
in it the elements of his best work. 

It is idle to deny that Stevenson appeals 
only to a limited audience. Despite his 
keen interest in all kinds of people, he 

[127J 



Modern English Books of Power 

lacked that sympathetic touch which brings 
large sales and wide circulation. About the 
time of his death his admirers declared he 
would supersede Scott or Dickens; but the 
seventeen years since his death have seen 
many changes in literary reputations. Ste- 
venson has held his own remarkably well. 
As a man the interest in him is still keen, 
but of his works only a few are widely 
read. 

Among these the first place must be given 
to Dr, Jekyll and Mr, Hyde, partly because 
of the profound impression made upon the 
public mind by the dramatization of this 
tale, and partly because it appeals strongly 
to the sense of the mystery of conflidting 
personality. Next to this is treasure Island, 
one of the best romances of adventure ever 
written. Readers who cannot feel a thrill 
of genuine terror when the blind pirate 
Pew comes tapping with his cane have 
missed a great pleasure. One-legged John 
Silver, in his cheerful lack of all the ordi- 
nary virtues, is a charader that puts the 
fear of death upon the reader. The open- 
ing chapter of this story is one of the finest 
things in all the literature of adventure. 

Of Stevenson's other work the two 
Scotch stonts, Kidnaped and David Balfour y 

[128] 



Prince of Modern Story-Tellers 

always seemed to me to be among his best. 
The chapter on the flight of David and 
Allan across the moor, the contest in play- 
ing the pipes and the adventures of David 
and Catriona in Holland-these are things 
to read many times and enjoy the more at 
every reading. Stevenson, like Jack Lon- 
don, is a writer for men; he could not draw 
women well. When he brings one in there 
is usually an end of stirring adventure, 
just as London spoiled T^he Sea tVolf^fith. 
his literary heroine. 

Of Stevenson's short stories the finest 
are 'The Pavilion on the Links, a tale of Sici- 
lian vengeance and English love that is full 
of haunting mystery and the deadly fear 
of unknown assassins; Markheim, a brilliant 
example of this author's skill in laying bare 
the conflid of a soul with evil and its ulti- 
mate triumph; 'The Sire de Maletroif s Door^ 
a vivid pidure of the cruelty and the auto- 
cratic power of a great French noble of the 
fifteenth century, and A Lodging for the 
Night, a remarkable defense of his life by 
the vagabond poet, Villon. Other short 
stories by Stevenson are worth careful 
study, but if you like these I have men- 
tioned you will need no guide to those 
which strike your fancy. 

[129] 



Modern English Books of Power 

The vogue of Stevenson's essays will 
last as long as that of his romances; for he 
excelled in this literary art of putting his 
personality into familiar talks with his 
reader. He ranks with Lamb and Thack- 
eray, Washington Irving and Donald G. 
Mitchell. Read those fine short sermons, 
Puhis et Umbra and Aes Trip lex ythQ latter 
with its eloquent pi6lure of sudden death 
in the fulness of power which was realized 
in Stevenson's own fate. Read Books Which 
Have Influenced Me^ A Gossip on Romance 
and Talk and Talkers. They are unsur- 
passed for thought and feeling and for 
brilliancy of style. 

But above everything looms the man 
himself-a chronic invalid, who might well 
have pleaded his weakness and constant 
pains as an excuse for idleness and railings 
against fate. Stoic courage in the strong is 
a virtue, but how much greater the cheerful 
courage that laughs at sickness and pain! 
Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and 
essays that help one to endure the blows 
of fate is a spedacle such as this world has 
few to offer. So the man's life and work 
have come to be a constant inspiration to 
those who are faint-hearted, a call to arms 
of all one's courage and devotion. 

[130] 



Thomas Hardy 
And His Tragic Tales 

OfWessex 

Greatest Living Writer of English 
Fiction-Because of Resentment of 
Harsh Criticisms the Prose Master 
Turns to Verse. 

No one will question the assertion that 
Thomas Hardy is the greatest living 
English writer of fid:ion,and the pity of it is 
that a man with so splendid an equipment 
for writing novels of the first rank should 
have failed for many years to give the world 
any work in the special field in which he 
is an acknowledged master. Hardy seems 
to have revolted from certain harsh criti- 
cism of his last novel, Jude the Obscure^ 
and to have determined that he would 
write no more fidlion for an unappreciative 
world. So he has turned to the writing of 
verse, in which he barely takes second 
rank. It is one of the tragedies of literature 
to think of a man of Hardy^s rank as a 

[131] 



Modern English Books of Power 

novelist, who might give the world a sec- 
ond "Tess or The Return of the Native, 
contenting himself with a ponderous poem 
like The Dynasts, or wasting his powers on 
minor poems containing no real poetry. 

Hardy's best novels are among the few 
in English lidlion that can be read again 
and again, and that reveal at every reading 
some fresh beauties of thought or style. 
The man is so big, so genuine and so un- 
like all other writers that his work must 
be set apart in a class by itself. Were he 
not so richly endowed his pessimism would 
be fatal, for the world does not favor the 
novelist who demands that his fidlion 
should be governed by the same hard rules 
that govern real life. In the work of most 
novelists we know that whatever harsh fate 
may befall the leading charaders the skies 
will be sunny before the story closes, and 
the worthy souls who have battled against 
malign destiny will receive their reward. 
Not so with Hardy. We know when we 
begin one of his tales that tragedy is in 
store for his people. The dark cloud of 
destiny soon obscures the heavens, and 
through the lowering storm the vidims 
move on to the final scene in which the 
wreck of their fortunes is completed. 

[132] 




Thomas Hardy— A Portrait Which Brings out 

Strikingly the Man of Creative Power, 

THE Artist, the Philosopher 

and the Poet 



Hardy and His Wessex Tales 

Literary genius can work no greater 
miracle than this-to make the reader accept 
as a transcript of life stories in which gen- 
erous, unselfish people are dealt heavy 
blows by fate, while the mean-souled, sor- 
did men and women often escape their just 
deserts. Hardy is not unreligious; he is 
simply and frankly pagan. Yet he differs 
from the classical writers in the fad that 
he is keenly alive to all the strong influ- 
ences of nature on a sympathetic mind, 
and he is also a believer in the power of 
romantic love. 

No one has ever equaled Hardy in mak- 
ing the reader feel the living power of trees 
and other objedts of nature. You can not 
escape the influence of his scenic effeds. 
These are never theatrical-in fad: they 
seem to form a vital part of every story. 
The scenes of all his novels are laid in his 
native Dorsetshire, which he has thinly 
disguised under the old Saxon name of 
Wessex. In Far From the Madding Crowd 
Hardy first demonstrated the tremendous 
possibilities of rural scenes as a vital back- 
ground for a story, but in 'The Return of the 
Native he adually makes Egdon heath the 
most absorbing feature of the book. All the 
charaders seem to take life and coloring 

[133] 



Modern English Books of Power 

from this heath, which has in it the potency 
of transforming characters and of wrecking 
lives. And in '^ess the peaceful, rural scenes 
appear to accentuate the tragedy of the 
heroine's unavailing struggles against a 
fate that was worse than death, 

Hardy's parents intended him for the 
church, but the boy probably gave some 
indications of his pagan cast of mind, for 
they finally compromised by apprenticing 
him to an ecclesiastical archited. In this 
calling the youth worked with sympathy 
and ability; the results of this training may 
be seen in the perfe6lion of his plots and 
in his fondness for graphic description of 
churches and other pidturesque buildings. 
One curious feature of this training may 
be seen in Hardy's sympathy and rever- 
ence for any church building. As Professor 
William Lyon Phelps very aptly says of 
Hardy: "No man to-day has less respect 
for God and more devotion to his house." 

The antipathy of Hardy to any kind of 
publicity has kept the facts of his life in 
the background, but it is an open secret 
that much of the longing of Jude for a col- 
lege education was drawn from his own 
boyhood. It is also a matter of record 
that as a boy he served as amanuensis for 

[134] 



Hardy and His Wessex Tales 

many servant maids, writing the love let- 
ters which they didated. In this way, 
before he knew the real meaning of sex and 
the significance of life he had obtained a 
deep insight into the nature of women, 
which served him in good stead when he 
came to draw his heroines. All his women 
are made up of mingled tenderness and 
caprice, and though female critics of his 
work may claim that these traits are over- 
drawn, no man ever feels like disseding 
Hardy's women, for the reason that they 
are so charmingly feminine. 

One may fancy that Hardy took great 
delight in his architectural work, for it 
required many excursions to old churches 
in Dorsetshire to see whether they were 
worth restoring. When he was thirty-one 
Hardy decided to abandon architedlure for 
fidion. His first novtl, Desperate Remedies, 
was crude, but it is interesting as showing 
the novelist in his first attempts to reveal 
real life and charader. His second book. 
Under the Greenwood Tree^ is a charming 
love story, and A Fair of Blue Eyes was a 
forerunner of his first great story, F<3ri^ri?w 
the Madding Crowd, It may have been the 
title, torn from a line of Gray's Elegy ^ or 
the novelty of the tale, in which English 

[i3S] 



Modern English Books of Power 

rustics were depided as ably as in George 
Eliot's novels, that made it appeal to the 
great public. Whatever the cause, the book 
made a great popular hit. I can recall when 
Henry Holt brought it out in the pretty 
Leisure Hour series in 1875. Three years 
later Hardy produced his finest work, ^he 
Return of the Native, He followed this 
with more than a dozen novels, among 
which may be mentioned l^he Mayor of 
Casterbridgey ^he Woodlanders^ 'Tess of the 
d' UrbervtlleSy and Jude the Obscure. 

In taking up Hardy one should begin 
with Far From the Madding Crowd, The 
story of Bathsheba Everdene's relations 
with her three lovers, Sergeant Troy, Bold- 
wood and Gabriel Oak, moves one at times 
to some impatience with this charming 
woman's frequent change of mind, but she 
would not be so attractive or so natural if 
she were not so full of caprice. His women 
all have strong human passion, but they 
are destitute of religious faith. They adore 
with rare fervor the men whom they love. 
In this respedt Bathsheba is like Eustacia, 
Tess, Marty South or Lady Constantine. 
Social rank, education or breeding does not 
change them. Evidently Hardy believes 
women are made to charm and comfort 

[136] 



Hardy and His Wessex Tales 

man, not to lead him to spiritual heights, 
where the air is thin and chill and kisses 
have no sweetness. 

In his first novel Hardy lightened the 
tragedy of life with rare comedy. These 
comic interludes are furnished by a choice 
colledtion of rustics, who discuss the affairs 
of the universe and of their own township 
with a humor that is infedious. In this 
work Hardy surpasses George Eliot and 
all other novelists of his day, just as he 
surpasses them all in such wholesome types 
of country life as Giles Winterbourne and 
Marty South of l^he Woodlanders, No 
pathos is finer than Marty's unselfish love 
for the man who cannot see her own rare 
spirit, and nothing that Hardy has written 
is more powerful than Marty's lament 
over the grave of Giles: 

<*Now, my own, my love," she whispered, **you are 
mine, and on'y mine, for she has forgot *ec at last, 
although for her you died. But I-whenever I get up 
ril think of *ec, and whenever I lie down I'll think of 
'ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I'll think 
none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a 
gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I'll say none 
could do it like you. If I forget your name, let me for- 
get home and heaven! But, no, no, my love, I never 
can forget 'ce, for you was a good man and did good 
things!'* 



[137] 



Modern English Books of Power 

l^he Return of the Native is generally 
regarded as Hardy's finest work. Certainly 
in this novel of passion and despair he has 
conjured up elements that speak to the 
heart of every reader. The hand of fate 
clutches hold of all the charaders. When 
Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit 
her husband's mother she sets in motion 
events that bring swift ruin upon her as 
well as upon others. At every turn of the 
story the somber Egdon heath looms in 
the background, more real than any char- 
after in the romance, a sinister force that 
seems to sweep the charaders on to their 
doom. 'Tess is more appealing than any 
other of Mr. Hardy's works, but it is hurt 
by his desire to prove that the heroine was 
a good woman in spite of her sins against 
the social code. What has also given this 
work a great vogue is the splendid adting 
of Mrs. Fiske in the play made from the 
novel. 

In Jude the Obscure Hardy had a splen- 
did conception, but he developed it in a 
morbid way, bringing out the animalism of 
the hero's wife and forcing upon the reader 
his curious ideas about marriage. 

But above and beyond everything else 
Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest 

[138] 



Hardy and His Wessex Tales 

story tellers the world has ever seen. You 
may take up any of his works and after 
reading a chapter you have a keen desire 
to follow the tale to the end, despite the 
fad: that you feel sure the end will be 
tragic. Nothing is forced for effed:; the 
whole story moves with the simplicity of 
fate itself, and the charaders, good and bad, 
are swept on to their doom as though they 
were caught in the rush of waters that go 
over Niagara falls. Hardy's style is clear, 
simple, dired, and abounds in Biblical allu- 
sions and phrases. In nature study Hardy's 
novels are a liberal education, for beyond 
any other author of the last century he has 
brought out the beauty and the significance 
of tree and flower, heath and mountain. 
They may be read many times, and at each 
perusal new beauties will be discovered to 
reward the reader. 



[139] 



Kipling's 

Best Short Stories 

And Poems 

Tales of East Indian Life and Char- 
acter—Ideal Training of the Genius 
ThatHasProducedSome oftheBest 
Literary Work of Our Day. 

RUDYARD Kipling cannot be classified 
with any writer of his own age or of 
any literary age in the past. His tremen- 
dous strength, his visual faculty, even his 
mannerisms, are his own. He has written 
too much for his own fame, but although 
the next century will discard nine-tenths 
of his work, it will hold fast to the other 
tenth as among the best short stories and 
poems that our age produced. Kipling is 
essentially a short-story writer; not one of 
his longer novels has any real plot or the 
power to hold the reader's interest to the 
end. Kityiy the best of his long works, is 
merely a series of panoramic views of Indian 
life and charader, which could be split up 
into a dozen short stories and sketches. 

[140] 







% 



> 

° 3 






w 



m 



^ d S 

c» ?o O 

2 5 W 



Kipling's Best Stories and Poems 

But in the domain of the short story 
KipHng is easily the first great creative 
artist of his time. No one approaches him 
in vivid descriptive power, in keen char- 
ader portraiture, in the faculty of making 
a strange and alien life as real to us as 
the life we have always known. And in 
some of his more recent work, as in the 
story of the two young Romans in Puck 
of Pook's Hill^ Kipling reaches rare heights 
in reproducing the romance of a bygone 
age. In these tales of ancient Britain the 
poet in Kipling has full sway and his visual 
power moves with a freedom that stamps 
clearly and deeply every image upon the 
reader's mind. 

The first ten years of Kipling's literary 
adivity were given over to a wonderful 
reprodudion of East Indian life as seen 
through sympathetic English eyes. Yet 
the sympathy that is revealed in Kipling's 
best sketches of native life in India is 
never tinged with sentiment. The native 
is always drawn in his relations to the 
Englishman; always the traits of revenge 
or of gratitude or of dog-like devotion 
are brought out. Kipling knows the East 
Indian through and through, because in 
his childhood he had a rare opportunity to 

[hi] 



Modern English Books of Power 

watch the native. The barrier of reserve, 
which was always maintained against the 
native Englishman, was let down in the 
case of this precocious child, who was a far 
keener observer than most adults. And 
these early impressions lend an extraordi- 
nary life and vitality to the sketches and 
stories on which Kipling's fame will ulti- 
mately rest. 

The early years of Kipling were spent in 
an ideal way for the development of the 
creative literary artist. Born at Bombay 
in December, 1865, he absorbed Hindu- 
stanee from his native nurse, and he saw 
the native as he really is, without the guard 
which is habitually put up in the presence 
of the Briton, even though this alien may 
be held in much esteem. The son of John 
Lockwood Kipling, professor of architec- 
tural sculpture in the British School of 
Art at Bombay, and of a sister of Edward 
Burne-Jones, it was not strange that this 
boy should have developed strong powers 
of imagination or that his mind should have 
sought relief in literary expression. 

The school days of Kipling were spent 
at Westward Ho, in Devon, where, though 
he failed to distinguish himself in his stud- 
ies, he established a reputation as a clever 



Kipling's Best Stories and Poems 

writer of verse and prose. He also enjoyed 
in these formative years the friendship and 
counsel of Burne-Jones, and he had the 
use of several fine private libraries. His 
wide reading probably injured his school 
standing, but it was of enormous benefit to 
him in his future literary work. At seven- 
teen young Kipling returned to India, 
where he secured a position on the Civil 
AND Military Gazette of Lahore, where 
his father was principal of a large school 
of arts. 

The Anglo-Indian newspaper is not a 
model, but it afforded a splendid field for 
the development of Kipling's abilities. He 
was not only a reporter of the ordinary 
occurrences of his station, but he was con- 
stantly called upon to write short sketches 
and poems to fill certain corners in the 
paper, that varied in size according to the 
number and length of the advertisements. 
Some of the best of his short sketches and 
bits of verse were written hurriedly on the 
composing stone to satisfy such needs. 
These sketches and poems he published 
himself and sent them to subscribers in all 
parts of India, but though their cleverness 
was recognized by Anglo-Indians, they did 
not appeal to the general public. After 

[H3] 



Modern English Books of Power 

five years' work at Lahore, Kipling was 
transferred to the Allahabad PiONEER^one 
of the most important of the Anglo-Indian 
journals. For the weekly edition of this 
paper he wrote many verses and sketches 
and also served as special correspondent in 
various parts of India. 

It was in 1889 that the Pioneer sent 
him on a tour of the world and he wrote 
the series of letters afterwards reprinted 
under the title From Sea to Sea, Kipling, 
like Stevenson, had to have a story to tell 
to bring out all his powers; hence these 
letters are not among his best work. 

Vividly do I recall Kipling's visit to San 
Francisco. He came into the Chronicle 
office and was keenly interested in the fine 
colledlions which made this newspaper's 
library before the fire the most valuable on 
this Coast, if not in the country. He was 
also much impressed with the many devices 
for securing speed in typesetting and other 
mechanical work. The only feature of his 
swarthy face that impressed one was his 
brilliant black eyes, which behind his large 
glasses, seemed to note every detail. He 
talked very well, but although he made 
friends among local newspapermen, he was 
unsuccessful in selling any of his stories to 

[144] 




RuDYARD Kipling 
From a Cartoon by W. Nicholson 



Kipling's Best Stories and Poems 

the editors of the Sunday supplements. 
He soon went to New York, but there 
also he failed to dispose of his stories. 

Finally Kipling reached London in Sep- 
tember, 1889, and after several months of 
discouragement, he induced a large pub- 
lishing house to bring out Plain 'Tales From 
the Hills, It scored an immediate success. 
Like Byron, the unknown young writer 
awoke to find himself famous; magazine 
editors clamored for his stories at fancy 
prices and publishers eagerly sought his 
work. It may be said to Kipling's credit 
that he did not utilize this opportunity to 
make money out of his sudden reputation. 
He doubtless worked over many old 
sketches, but he put his best into what- 
ever he gave the public. He married the 
sister of Wolcott Balestier, a brilliant 
American who became very well known 
in London as a publishers' agent, and after 
Balestier's death Kipling moved to his 
wife's old home in Brattleboro, Vermont, 
where he built a fine country house; but 
constant trouble with a younger brother 
of his wife caused him to abandon this 
American home and go back to England, 
where he set up his lares at Rottingdean, 
in Surrey. There he has remained, aver- 

[H5] 



Modern English Books of Power 

aging a book a year, until now he has over 
twenty-five large volumes to his credit. In 
1907 Kipling was given the Nobel prize 
"for the best work of an idealist tendency." 

In reading Kipling it is best to begin 
with some of the tales written in his early 
life, for these he has never surpassed in 
vigor and interest. Take, for instance. 
Without Benefit of Clergy^ 'The Man Who 
WaSy 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft, The 
Man Who Would Be King and Beyond the 
Pale, These stories all deal with Anglo- 
Indian life, two with the British soldier 
and the other three with episodes in the 
lives of British officials and adventurers. 

The Man Who Would Be King, the finest 
of all Kipling*s tales of Anglo-Indian life 
and adventure, is the story of the fatal 
ambition of Daniel Dravot, told by the 
man who accompanied him into the wildest 
part of Afghanistan. Daniel made the 
natives believe that he was a god and he 
could have ruled them as a king had he 
not foolishly become enamored of a native 
beauty. This girl was prompted by a native 
soothsayer to bite Dravot in order to decide 
whether he was a god or merely human. 
The blood that she drew on his neck was 
ample proof of his spurious claims and the 

[146] 



Kipling's Best Stories and Poems 

two adventurers were chased for miles 
through a wild country. When captured 
Daniel is forced to walk upon a bridge, the 
ropes of which are then cut, and his body 
is hurled hundreds of feet down upon the 
rocks. The story of the survivor, who 
escaped after crucifixion, is one of the 
ghastliest tales in all literature. 

Other tales that Kipling has written of 
Indian life are scarcely inferior to these in 
strange, uncanny power. One of the weird- 
est relates the adventures of an army officer 
who fell into the place where those who 
have been legally declared dead, but who 
have recovered, pass their lives. As a pic- 
ture of hell on earth it has never been 
surpassed. Another of KipHng's Indian 
tales that is worth reading is William the 
Conqueror^ a love story that has a back- 
ground of grim work during the famine 
year. 

One of Kipling's claims to fame is that 
he has drawn the British soldier in India 
as he adtually lives. His Soldiers 'Three— 
Mulvaney, the Irishman, Ortheris, the 
cockney, and Learoyd, the Yorkshireman— 
are so full of real human nature that they 
delight all men and many women. Mul- 
vaney is the finest creation of Kipling, and 

[H7] 



Modern English Books of Power 

most of his stories are brimful of Irish 
wit. Of late years Kipling has written 
some fine imaginative stories, such as T^he 
Brushwood Boy^ 'They and An Habitation 
Enforced. He has also revealed his genius 
in such tales of the future as With the Night 
Mail, a remarkably graphic sketch of a voy- 
age across the Atlantic in a single night in 
a great aeroplane. Another side of Kip- 
ling's genius is seen in his Jungle Stories, 
in which all the wild animals are endowed 
with speech. Mowgh, the boy who is 
suckled by a wolf, is a distind: creation, 
and his adventures are full of interest. 
Compare these stories with the work of 
Thompson-Seton and you get a good idea 
of the genius of Kipling in making real the 
savage struggle for life in the Indian jungle. 

Of Kipling^s long novels The Naulakha 
ranks first for interest of plot, but Kim is 
the best because of its series of wonderful 
pidures of East Indian life and charader. 
Captains Courageous is a story of Cape Cod 
fishing life, with an improbable plot but 
much good description of the perils and 
hardships of the men who seek fortune on 
the fishing banks. 

As a poet Kipling appeals strongly to 
men who love the life of adion and adven- 

[148] 



KiPLiNG*s Best Stories and Poems 

ture in all parts of the world. In his 
Departmental Ditties he has painted the 
life of the British soldier and the civilian 
in India, and his Danny Dever, his Man- 
dalay and others which sing themselves 
have passed into the memory of the great 
public that seldom reads any verse unless 
it be the words of a popular song. The 
range of his verse is very wide, whether it 
is the superb imagery in 'The Last Chantey 
or the impressive Galvanism oiMcAndrew" s 
Hymn, His Recessional^ of course, is known 
to everyone. It is one of the finest bits of 
verse printed in the last twenty years. 

Kipling, in spite of his many volumes, 
is only forty-six years old, and he may be 
counted on to do much more good work. 

If he turns to historical fidion he may 
yet do for EngUsh history what the author 
of Waverley has done for the history of 
Scotland. Certainly he has the finest cre- 
ative imagination of his age; in whatever 
domain it may work it is sure to produce 
literature that will live. 



[149] 



Bibliography 



Short Notes of Both Standard and Other 
Editions^ With Lives, Sketches and 
Reminiscences, 

7'hese bibliographical notes on the authors 
discussed in this volume are brief because 
the space allotted to them was limited. 'They 
are designed to mention the first complete edi- 
tions—the standard editions-as well as the 
lives of authors, estimates of their works and 
sketches and personal reminiscences. A mass 
of good material on the great writers of the 
Victorian age is buried in the bound volumes 
of English and American reviews and maga- 
zines, The best guide to these articles is 
Poole s ''Index:' 

The most valuable single volumes to one 
who wishes to make a study of eighteenth and 
nineteenth century English writers are: ''A 
Study of English Prose Writers'' and ''A 
Study of English and American Poets," by 
J. Scott Clark. (New York: Charles Scrib- 
nersSons. Price, $2 net a volume.) These two 
volumes will give any one who wishes to make 

[151] 



Bibliography 

a study of the authors I have discussed the 
material for a mastery of their works. Under 
full biographical sketches the author gives 
estimates of the be St critics^ extracts from their 
works and a full bibliography^ including the 
best magazine articles, 

MACAULAY 

The editions of Macaulay are so numerous that it is 
useless to attempt to enumerate them. A standard edi- 
tion was collected in 1866 by his sister. Lady Trevelyan. 
Four volumes are devoted to the history and three to 
the essays and lives of famous authors which he wrote 
for the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Macaulay 's essays, 
which have enjoyed the greatest popularity in this 
country, may be found in many forms. A one-volume 
edition, containing the principal essays, is issued by sev- 
eral publishers. Sir George Otto Trevelyan* s The Life 
and Letters of Lord Macaulay in two volumes (i 876) 
is a more interesting biography than Lockhart's Scott, 
The best single-volume estimate of Macaulay is J. Cot- 
ter Morison's Macaulay in the English Men of Letter's 
series. Good short critical sketches of Macaulay and 
his work may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's Hours 
in a Library y volume 2, and in Lord Morley's Critical 
Miscellanies y volume 2. 

SCOTT 

The edition of Scott, which was his own favorite, 
was issued in Edinburgh in forty-eight volumes, from 
1829 to 1833. Scott wrote new prefaces and notes 
for this edition. Another is the Border edition, with 
introductory essays and notes by Andrew Lang (forty- 



\}sA 



Bibliography 

eight volumes, 1 892-1 894). The recent editions o{ 
Scott are numerous for, despite all criticisms of his 
careless style, he holds his own with the popular favor- 
ites of the day. Of his poems a good edition was 
edited by William Minto in two volumes, in 1888. 
The Life of Scott by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is 
the standard work. This was originally issued in seven 
volumes but Lockhart was induced to condense it into 
one volume, which gives about all that the ordinary 
reader cares for. This may be found in Everyman's 
library. Scott's Journal z.-i\6. his Familiar Letters ^ both 
edited by David Douglas, contain much interesting 
material. The best short lives of Scott are by R. H. 
Hutton in the English Men of Letters series and by 
George Saintsbury in the Famous Scots series. Among 
the best sketches and estimates of Scott are by Andrew 
Lang in Letters to Dead Authors; Sir Leslie Stephen 
in Hours in a Library; Conan Doyle in Through the 
Magic Door; Walter Bagehot in Literary Studies; Ste- 
venson in Gossip on Romance and in Memoirs and For- 
traitSy and S. R. Crockett in The Scott Country, 
Abbotsfordy by Washington Irving, gives the best per- 
sonal sketches of Scott at home. 

CARLYLE 

Carlyle's Essays and his French Revolution, upon 
which his fame will chiefly rest, are issued in many 
editions. It would be well if his longer works could 
be condensed into single volumes by competent hands. 
A revised edition of his Frederick was issued in one 
short volume. For the facts of Carlyle's life, the best 
book is his own Reminiscences issued in 1 8 8 1 and edited 
by Froude, who was his literary executor with the full 
power to publish or suppress. Froude had so great 



Vsi\ 



Bibliography 

an antipathy to what Carlyle himself called "mealy- 
mouthed biography" that he erred on the side of extreme 
frankness. In Thomas Carlyle— The First Forty Tears 
of His Life, Life in London and Letters of 'Jane Welsh 
Carlyle y Froude permitted the publication of many mali- 
cious comments by Carlyle on his famous contemporaries. 
These and morbid expressions of remorse by Carlyle 
over imaginary neglect of his wife caused a great revulsion 
of public sentiment and the fame of Carlyle was clouded 
for ten years. Finally, after much acrimonious contro- 
versy, the truth prevailed and Carlyle came into his 
own again. 

Among the best books on Carlyle are Lowell's 
Essays, volume 2; David Masson, Carlyle Personally 
and in His Writings; E. P. Whipple, Essays and Re- 
views; Emerson, English Traits; Lowell, My Study 
Windows; Morley, English Literature in the Reign of 
Vi^oria; Greg, Literary and Social Judgments; Mon- 
cure Conway, Carlyle, and Yi&r^ty , Views and Review s» 

Among magazine and review articles may be men- 
tioned George Eliot in Westminster Review, volume 
57 ; John Burroughs in Atlantic Monthly, volume 5 i ; 
Emerson in Scribner's Magazine, volume 22; Froude 
in Nineteenth Century, volume 10, and Leslie Ste- 
phen in Cornhill, volume 44. 

DE aUINCEY 

It is a curious fact that the first complete edition of 
De Quincey's works was issued in Boston in twenty 
volumes (185 0-1855) by Ticknor & Fields. Much of 
the material was gathered from English periodicals, as 
De Quincey was the greatest magazine writer of his 
age. This was followed by the Riverside edition in 
twelve volumes ( Boston, 1877). The standard English 



[154] 



Bibliography 

edition is The Colle6ied Writings of Thomas De ^incey, 
fourteen volumes, edited by David Masson (1889- 
1890). A. H. Japp vi^rote the standard English Life 
of De ^incey (London, two volumes, 1879). The 
best short life is Masson' s in the English Men of Let- 
ters series. George Saintsbury gives a good sketch of 
De Quincey in Essays in English Literature. Other 
estimates may be found in the following works: Leslie 
Stephen, Hours in a Library; H. A. Page, De ^in- 
cey. His Life and Writings and in Mrs. Oliphant's 
Literary History of England, 

LAMB 

Reprints of the Essays of Elia have been very 
numerous. One of the best editions of Lamb's com- 
plete works was edited by E. V. Lucas in seven vol- 
umes, to which he added in 1905 The Life of Charles 
Lamb in two volumes. Another is Complete Works and 
Correspondence y edited by Canon Ainger (London, six 
volumes). Ainger also wrote an excellent short life of 
Lamb for the English Men of Letters series. Hazlitt 
and Percy Fitzgerald have revised Thomas Noon Tal- 
fourd's standard Letters of Charles Lamb, With a Sketch 
of His Life. Among sketches of the life of Charles and 
Mary Lamb may be noted Barry Cornwall's Charles 
Lamb— A Memoir; Fitzgerald, Charles Lamb: His 
Friends, His Haunts and His Books; Walter Pater, 
Appreciations; R. H. Stoddard, Personal RecolleSiions; 
Augustine Birrell, Res Judicatcs; Nicoll, Landmarks 
of English Literature; Talfourd, Final Memorials of 
Charles Lamb; Hutton, Literary Landmarks of London, 

DICKENS 

The first colledlive edition of Dickens* works was 
issued in 1847. The standard edition is that of Chap- 



Vss\ 



Bibliography 

man & Hall, London, who were the original publishers 
of Pickwick, One of the best of the many editions of 
Dickens is the Macmillan Pocket edition with repro- 
dudlions of the original covers of the monthly parts of 
the novels as they appeared, the original illustrations 
by Cruikshank, Leech,** Phiz" (Hablot Browne) and 
others, and valuable and interesting introduftions by 
Charles Dickens the younger. Another good edition is 
in the World's Classics, with brilliant introduftions by 
G. K. Chesterton. In buying an edition of Dickens 
it is well to get one with reproduftions of the original 
illustrations, as these add much to the pleasure and 
interest of the novels. 

For ready reference to Dickens' works there is a 
Dickens Di^ionary, giving the names of all charafters 
and places in the novels, by G. A. Pierce, and another 
similar work by A. J. Philip. Mary Williams has also 
prepared a Dickens Concordance, 

Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, in three volumes, 
is the standard work, as Forster was closely connedled 
with the novelist from the time he made his hit with 
Pickwick, George Gissing, the novelist, made an 
abridgment of Forster' s Life in one volume, which is 
well done. Scores of shorter lives and sketches have 
been written. Among the best of these are Dr. A.W. 
Ward's Charles Dickens in the English Men of Letters 
series; Taine's chapter on Dickens in his History of 
English Literature; Sir Leslie Stephen's article in the 
Dictionary of National Biography; Mrs. Oliphant's The 
Victorian Age in English Literature; F. G. Kitton's 
Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, 
The Letters, edited by Miss Hogarth and Mary Dick- 
ens, are valuable for the light they throw on the novel- 
ist's character and work. 

[^56] 



Bibliography 

In reminiscence of Dickens, the best books are Mary- 
Dickens' My Father as I Recall Him; J. T. Fields' 
In and Out of Doors With Charles Dickens and G. Dol- 
by's Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, the last devoted 
to the famous reading tours. Edmund Yates, Anthony 
Trollope, James Payn, R. H. Haine and many others 
have written readable reminiscences. 

For the home life of Dickens and his haunts see F. G. 
Kitton's The Dickens Country; Thomas Fort's In Kent 
With Charles Dickens and H. S. Ward's The Real 
Dickens Land. Of poems on Dickens* death the very 
best is Bret Harte's Dickens in Camp, ThQ Wisdom of 
Dickens, compiled by Temple Scott, is a good colleftion 
of extrafts. 

THACKERAY 

Almost as many editions of Thackeray's works have 
been published as of Dickens' novels, and the reader in 
his selection must be guided largely by his own taste. 
In choosing an edition, however, always get one that 
contains Thackeray's own illustrations, as, though the 
drawing is frequently crude, the sketches are full of 
humor and help one to understand the author's con- 
ception of the charafters. The best general edition is 
The Biographical, with introduftions by his daughter, 
Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (London, i 897-1900). The 
Charterhouse edition of Thackeray in twenty-six vol- 
umes, published in England by Smith, Elder & Co. and 
in this country by Lippincott, is an excellent library set 
containing all the original illustrations. 

No regular biography of Thackeray has ever been 
written because of his expressed wish, but his daughter, 
Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, has supplied this lack with 
many sketches and introduftions to various editions of 



{^S7] 



Bibliography 

her father's works, Anthony Trollope in his autobiog- 
raphy gives many charming glimpses of Thackeray but 
his sketch of Thackeray in the English Men of Letters 
series is not warmly appreciative. 

One of the best short estimates of Thackeray is 
Charles Whibley's Thackeray (1905). Also valuable 
are sketches by Frederic Harrison in Early Victorian 
Literature; Brownell, Early Victorian Masters; Whip- 
ple, CharaSler and CharaSierhtic Men; R. H. Stod- 
dard, Aiiecdote Biography of Thackeray; Andrew Lang, 
Letters to Dead Authors; G. T. Fields, Yesterdays 
With Authors; JeafFreson, Novels and Novelists and 
W. B. Jerrold The Best of All Good Company, 

The reviews and magazines, especially in the last 
ten years, have abounded in articles on Thackeray. 
Among these the best have appeared in Scribner's 
Magazine. A small volume. The Sense and Sentiment 
of Thackeray (Harper's, 1909), gives numerous good 
extradls from the novels as well as from the essays. 

CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

Smith, Elder & Co. of London were the publishers 
of Jane Eyre and they also issued the first collefted 
edition of Charlotte Bronte's works. This firm still 
publishes the standard English edition, the Haworth edi- 
tion, with admirable introduftions by Mrs. Humphrey 
Ward and with many illustrations from photographs of 
the places and people made memorable in Charlotte's 
novels. A good American edition is the Shirley edi- 
tion, with excellent illustrations, many of them repro- 
ductions of rare daguerreotypes. 

The standard life of Charlotte Bronte until fifteen 
years ago was Mrs. Gaskell's, one of the most appeal- 
ing stories in all literature. Clement K. Shorter's 



[158] 



Bibliography 

Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle is now indispensable 
because of the mass of fafts that the author has gathered 
in regard to the life of the sisters in the lonely parsonage 
and their remarkable literary development. Augustine 
Birrell has written a good short life of Charlotte, while 
A. M. F. Robinson (Mme. Duclaux) has a volume on 
Emily Bronte in the Famous Women series. 

T. Wemyss Reid was the first writer to make orig- 
inal research among the Bronte material and his book, 
Charlotte Bronte— A Monograph, paved the way for the 
exhaustive study of this strange family of genius by 
Clement Shorter. Other books that give much original 
material are The Brontes in Ireland, by Rev. Dr. 
William Wright, and Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters, 
by Clement Shorter. Mr. Shorter also in The Brontes- 
Life and Letters gives all of Charlotte's letters in the 
order of their dates. 

GEORGE ELIOT 

The first collefted edition of George Eliot's works 
was brought out in iSyS-iSSoin London and Edin- 
burgh. Many editions have since appeared in England 
and in this country, the best one being the English 
Cabinet edition, published by A. & C. Black. 

The standard life of George Eliot is George Eliot's 
Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals , edited by 
her husband, J. W. Cross, who served for ten years 
as curate of Haworth. Leslie Stephen has written a 
remarkably good short life of George Eliot in the English 
Men of Letters series. 

Among critical articles on George Eliot may be men- 
tioned Henry James in Partial Portraits; Mathilde 
Blind, George Eliot; Oscar Browning, Life of George 
Eliot in Great Writers series; Dowden, Studies in Lit- 
erature; Oscar Browning, Great Writers; Mayo W. 



[159] 



Bibliography 

Hazeltlne, Chats About Books; R. H. Hutton, Mod- 
ern Guides of Religious Thought; R. E. Cleveland, 
George Eliot'* s Poetry; Frederic Harrison, The Choice 
of Books and Sydney Lanier, The Development of the 
English NoveL 

RUSKIN 

The great edition of Ruskin is the Library edition 
by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, begun in 1903. 
It is splendidly illustrated and is a superb specimen of 
book-making. English and American editors of Ruskin 
are numerous. 

The standard life of Ruskin is by W. G. Colling- 
wood, his secretary and ardent disciple. One of his 
pupils, E. T. Cook, published Studies in Ruskin, which 
throws much light on his methods of teaching art. J. A. 
Hobson in John Ruskin, Social Reformer discusses his 
economic and social teaching. Dr. Charles Waldstein 
of Cambridge in The Work of John Ruskin develops 
his art theories. Good critical studies may also be found 
in W. M. Rossetti's Ruskin and Frederic Harrison's 
Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates; 
Justin McCarthy, Modern Leaders; Mary R. Mitford, 
Recollections of a Literary Life and R. H. Hutton, 
Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, 

Among magazine articles may be noted W. J. Still- 
man in the Century, volume 1 3 ; Charles Waldstein in 
Harper's, volume 1 8 ; Justin McCarthy in the Galaxy, 
volume 13, and Leslie Stephen in Frazer's, volumes 
9 and 49. 

TENNYSON 

The best edition of Tennyson is the Eversley in six 
volumes, published by the Macmillans and edited by 
his son Hallam, which contains a mass of notes left by 



[160] 



Bibliography 

the poet and many explanations of peculiar words and 
metaphors which the father gave to the son in discussing 
his work. This edition also gives the changes made by 
the poet in his constant revision of his works, some of 
which were not improvements. 

A mass of critical commentary and reminiscence has 
been published on Tennyson and his poetical work. 
Among the best of these volumes are Tennyson, Ruskin 
and Mill, by Frederic Harrison; Tennyson and His 
Friends, by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie; The Homes and 
Haunts of Tennyson, by Napier; Tennyson, His Art and 
Relation to Modern Life, by Stopford A. Brooke; The 
Poetry of Tennyson, by Henry Van Dyke; the chapter 
on Tennyson in Stedman's Viilorian Poets; a commen- 
tary on Tennyson's In Memoriam by Prof. A. C. 
Bradley; Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang; Fiews 
and Reviews, by W. E. Henley; Tester days With Au- 
thors, by J. T. Fields; The Viaorian Age, by Mrs. 
Oliphant. Dr. Henry Van Dyke contributed five articles 
on Tennyson to Scribner's Magazine, volume 6. 

BROWNING 

An enormous literature of comment, appreciation and 
interpretation has grown up around Browning, largely 
due to the work of various Browning societies in this 
country and in Europe. The London Browning Society 
especially has brought out many papers that will be of 
interest to Browning students. Other works are Arthur 
Symons, Intro du^ion to the Study of Browning (Lon- 
don, 1886); G. W. Cooke, Browning Guide Book 
(New York, 1 901); Fotheringham, Studies (London, 
1898); Stedman, Viaorian Poets; Prof. Hiram Cor- 
son, Introduction to Browning; George E. Woodberry, 
Studies in Literature and Life; Hamilton W. Mabie, 



[161] 



Bibliography 

Essays in Literary Interpretation; A. Birrell, Obiter 
Di8a; George Saintsburyj, Corrected Impressions. 

The first edition of Browning's poems appeared in 
two volumes in 1849, a second in three volumes in 
1863 and a third in six volumes in 1868. A revised 
edition containing all the poems was issued in sixteen 
volumes in 1888-1889. A fine complete edition in two 
volumes, edited by Augustine Birrell and F. G. Ken- 
yon, was issued in 1896, and Smith, Elder & Co., 
London, brought out a two-volume edition in 1900. 
In this country the Riverside edition of Browning's 
Poetical Works in six volumes, issued by Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., and the Camberwell edition in twelve 
handy volumes, with notes by Charlotte Porter and 
Helen A. Clarke, published by Crowell, are valuable 
for Browning students. 

The standard life is The Life and Letters of Robert 
Browningy by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, but valuable are 
The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning, issued by Browning's son in i 899. 
For Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning— Personalia the 
poet supplied much of the material in notes. Good 
short sketches and estimates are Chesterton's Browning 
in the English Men of Letters series and Waugh's 
Robert Browning. 

GEORGE MEREDITH 

The standard edition of Meredith's works is the 
Boxhill edition in seventeen volumes, with photogravure 
frontispieces, issued in this country by the Scribners. 
The same text is used in the Pocket Edition in sixteen 
volumes, which does not include the unfinished novel, 
Celt and Saxon. A mass of comment on Meredith may 
be found in the English and American reviews and maga- 
zines, to which Poole's Index furnishes the best guide. 



[i6a] 



Bibliography 

Mrs. M. S. Henderson, George Meredith: Novelist^ 
Poet, Reformer; George Macaulay Trevelyan, The 
Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith; John Lane, 
Biography of George Meredith, and R. Le Gallienne, 
Characteristics of George Meredith, 

STEVENSON 

Robert Louis Stevenson's early work appeared in 
fugitive form in magazines and reviews and even after 
he had written The Nezu Arabian Nights and Travels 
With a Donkey he was forced to see such excellent 
matter as The Silverado Squatters cut up into magazine 
articles and more than half of it discarded. The vogue 
of Stevenson was greater in this country than in Eng- 
land until he had fully established his reputation. In 
1878 An Inland Voyage appeared and in 1879 Travels 
With a Donkey, but it was not until 1883 that Treasure 
Island made him well known. The standard edition of 
Stevenson is the Thistle edition, beautifully printed and 
illustrated, and issued at Edinburgh and New York, 
1 894- 1 898. The Letters of Steve?ison to His Family, 
originally issued in 1899, have now been incorporated 
with Failima Letters and issued in four volumes. They 
are arranged chronologically, with admirable biograph- 
ical commentary by Sydney Colvin, to whom a great part 
of them was written. Stevenson's personality was so at- 
traftive that a mass of reminiscence and comment has 
been produced since his death in i 894. The best books 
are Graham Balfour, Life of Robert Louis Stevenson; 
Walter Raleigh, R. L. Stevenson; Simpson, Stevenson's 
Edinburgh Days, and Memoirs of Failima, by Isobel 
Strong and Lloyd Osbourne, the novelist's stepchildren. 
Henry James in Partial Portraits has a fine appreciation 
of Stevenson and Robert Louis Stevenson in California, 
by Katharine D. Osbourne is rich in reminiscence. 



[163] 



Bibliography 
THOMAS HARDY 

Since 1895, Thomas Hardy has written no fidlion. 
The standard edition of his works is published in this 
country by the Harpers. Recently this firm has issued 
Hardy in a convenient thin paper edition which may 
be slipped into the coat pocket. His first novel. Des- 
perate Remedies y appeared in i 871 but it was not until 
the issue of Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874 
that he gained popular fame. Many magazine articles 
have been written on the *'corner of Dorsetshire" 
which Hardy calls Wessex. Good books on the Hardy 
country are The Wessex of Romance , by W. Sherren, 
and The Wessex of Thomas Hardy, by Windle. 

KIPLING 

The standard edition of Kipling is the Outward 
Bound edition, published in this country by the Scrib- 
ners. It contains a general introduftion by the author 
and special prefaces to each volume, with illustrations 
from bas reliefs made by the novelist's father. Double- 
day, Page & Co. are issuing a pocket edition of Kipling, 
on thin paper with flexible leather binding, which is 
very convenient. Any additional books will be added 
to each of these editions. Kipling has told of his early 
life in India and of his precocious literary aftivity in 
My First Book (1894). Richard Le Gallienne made 
a study of the novelist in Rudyard Kipling— A Criticism 
and Edmund Gosse in ^estions at Issue discusses his 
short stories. Prof. William Lyon Phelps in Essays on 
Modern Novelists has a fine chapter on Kipling. Andrew 
Lang in Essays in Little treats of "Mr. Kipling's Stor- 
ies" and Barrie has an appreciation in Contemporary 
Review for March, 1891. A useful Kipling Index is 
issued by Doubleday, Page & Co. All titles are indexed 
so that one may locate any story or charafter. 



[164] 



Index 



A Blot on the ' Scutcheon, 

io8, I lo, 1 13. 
A Child's Garden of 

Verse, 125. 
Adam Bede, 65, y6, 82, 

84. 
Addison, 58. 
A Dissertation on Roast 

Pig,4i>7i. 
A Dream of Fair Women, 

99. 
Adventures of Philip, The, 

60. 
Aes Triplex, 130. 
Agnes Gray, 7 1 . 
A Gossip on Romance, 

130. 
A Lodging for the Night, 

124, 129. 
Alison Cunningham, 125. 
Allahabad Pioneer, 1 44. 
Amazing Marriage, The, 

122. 
An English Mail Coach, 

31- 

An Habitation Enforced, 

148. 

An Inland Voyage, 126. 
Anglo-Indian Life, 146. 
Antiquary, The, 18. 



A Pair of Blue Eyes, 135. 

Apostles, 99. 

Arnold, 1 1 6. 

Arthurian Legends, loi. 

Ashburton, Lady, 25. 

Ashby de la Zouch, 17. 

Asolando, 108, 11 1. 

A Soldier of France, 12. 

Asolo, 113. 

A Soul's Tragedy, 108, 

no, 113. 
ATaleofTwoCities,53. 
Austro-Italian War, 118. 
A Window in Thrums, 3 9. 

Balestier, Wolcott, 145. 

Ballantyne, 1 6, 90. 

Balzac, I 2. 

Balzac's Seraphita, 74. 

Bank of England, 109. 

Barrett, Elizabeth, 1 1 o. 

Barrie, 39. 

Bathsheba Everdene, 136. 

Becket, loi. 

Bells and Pomegranates, 

109. 
Beyond the Pale, 146. 
Biblical Allusions, 139. 
Bleak House, 54. 
Blue Coat School, 44. 



[165] 



Index 



Boldwood, 136. 

Boswell, 4. 

Bray, Charles, of Coven- 
try, 80. 

Brantwood, 93. 

Break, Break, Break, 105. 

Bronte, Charlotte, xii, 66 
to 72. 

Bronte, Emily, 68. 

Browning, Robert, xii, 97, 
103, 106 to 115, 117, 
118. 

Browning, Mrs., no. 

Brushwood Boy, The, 

148. 

Bunyan, 28. 
Burne-Jones, 142, 143. 
Burns, 113. 
Byron, 7, 98, 109, 145. 

Cain, 98. 
California, 127. 
Calvanism, 149. 
Cape Cod, 148. 
Captains Courageous, 1 48. 
Carlyle, Thomas, xii, xiii, 
3, 4, 8, 20 to 30, 43, 

52> 53.93- 
CasaGuidi Windows, 1 10. 

Cervantes, 1 1 . 
Chapman & Hall, 118. 
Charlotte, 68. 
Child Angel, The, 45. 
Childe Harold, 7, 90. 
Choir Invisible, The, 85. 



Christmas Carol, 51. 
Christmas Story, 5 1 . 
Chronicle, 144. 
Clive, 4, 9. 
Cloister and the Hearth, 

The, 65. 
Coleridge, 35, 42,43. 
Colombe's Birthday, 1 10, 

113- 

Colonel Newcome, 58. 
Confessions of an English 

Opium Eater, 36. 
Count Robert of Paris, 1 8 . 
Court of Chancery, 54. 
Cricket on the Hearth, 

The, 51. 
Croker, 4. 
Cromwell, 24. 
Cross, J. W., 82. 
Crossing the Bar, 9 8, i o i , 

105, 113. 
Crown of Wild Olives, 

The, 94. 

Dale in the Alps, 94. 
Daniel Deronda, 79, 82. 
Daniel Dravot, 146. 
Danny Dever, 149. 
David and Allan, 1 29. 
David and Catriona in 

Holland, 129. 
David Balfour, 128. 
David Copperfield, 53, 

128. 
David Warwick, 120. 



[166] 



Index 



Defoe, 62. 

Departmental Ditties, 1 49 . 
De Quincey, Thomas, XII, 

30 to 38, 45, 93. 

Autobiography, 3 i . 

Confessions, 31, 32. 
Desperate Remedies, 135. 
Dickens, Charles, xii, i 3, 

44, 47 to 55, 61, 128. 
Dinah Morris, 84. 
Diana of the Crossways, 

1 15, 120, 121, 122. 
Dombey and Son, 54. 
Don Juan, 98. 
Doyle, Conan, 12. 
Dramatic Idylls, 1 1 1 . 
Dramatic Romances and 

Lyrics, 1 10. 
Dream Children, xiv, 41, 

45- 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 

125, 126, 128. 
Drums of the Fore and 

Aft, The, 146. 
Dynasts, The, 132. 

East India Life, 141. 
Edinburgh Review, 4, 

23- 
Egdon Heath, 133, 138. 
Egoist, The, 121. 
Eliot, George, xii, 52, 76 

to 86, 136, 137. 
Emerson, 27, 1 16. 
English History, i 20,, 



English Humorists, The, 

60. 
Enoch Arden, loi. 
Esmond, 56. 
Essays of Elia, 40, 43. 
Eugenie Grandet, i 2. 
Eustacia, 136, 138. 
Evan Harrington, 121. 
Evelyn Hope, 113. 

Far From the Madding 

Crowd, 133, 135, 

136. 
Father Damien, 1 24. 
Felix Holt, 82. 
Filine at the Fair, 108,1 11. 
Fiske, Mrs., in Becky 

Sharp, 58, 138. 
Flight of the Tartar Tribe, 

The, 31. 
Fors Clavigera, 92. 
Four Georges, The, 60. 
Fra Lippo Lippi, 113. 
Eraser's Magazine, 23. 
Frederick the Great, 24. 
French Revolution, The, 

23, 27. 
From Sea to Sea, 1 44. 
Froude, 24. 

Gabriel Oak, 136. 
Gaelic Comment, 103. 
Gaskell, Mrs., 70. 
Gethsemane, xiv. 
Giles Winterbourne, 137. 



[167] 



Index 



Goethe, 23, 26. 
Goldsmith, 3. 
Gray's Elegy, 135. 
Great Hoggarty Diamond, 
The, 59. 

Hallam, Alfred, 99. 
Hallam, Arthur, 99, 100, 

103. 
Hardy, Thomas, xiii, ^"j , 

115, 116, 131 to 140. 
Harold, loi, 
Hastings, Warren, 4, 9. 
Heart of the Midlothian, 

The, 17, 18. 
Henry Esmond, 60, 
Herbert, Sidney, I 20. 
Heroes and Hero Wor- 
ship, 22. 
Herve Riel, 108. 
History of England, 7. 
Holt, Henry, 136. 
Household Words and All 

the Year Round, 5 1 . 
Howells' Criticism of 

Thackeray, 62. 
How They Brought the 

Good News, 108. 

Idylls ot the King, The, 

96, 100, 104. 
India, 102. 
Indian Life, 140. 
In Memoriam, 96, 98, 

100, 103, 104. 



InnAlbum,The, 1 08, in. 
Irving, Washington, 130. 
Ivanhoe, 17. 

James, Henry, 115, i 24. 
Jane Eyre, 59, 66, 68, 7 1 , 

73. 
Janet's Repentance, 81. 
John Silver, 125, 128. 
Johnson, 3. 
Jude the Obscure, 131, 

134, 136, 138. 
Jungle Stories, 148. 

Keats, 109. 
Kidnaped, 128. 
King Arthur, 104. 
King's Treasures, 92. 
Kim, 140, 148. 
Kipling, John Lockwood, 

142. 
Kipling, Rudyard, xiii, 

140 to 149. 

Labor, 26. 
Lacy, 113. 

Lady Constantine, 136. 
Lady Geraldine's Court- 
ship, 1 10. 
Lady Godiva, 100. 
Lady of Shalot, The, 99. 
Lady of the Lake, The, 7, 

15- 
Lahore, 144. 
Lamb, Mary, 41, 42. 



[168] 



In 



DEX 



Lamb, Charles, xii, 35, 
38 to 46, 123, 130. 
Lamp of Sacrifice, 94. 
Last Chantey, The, 149. 
Last Essays of Elia, The, 

45. 
Last Ride, The, 108. 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, 

The, 15. 
Lays of Ancient Rome, 7. 
Leader, Organ of the Free 

Thinkers, 8 1 . 
Learoyd, 147. 
Leisure Hour Series, 

136. 

Lewes, George Henry, 7 8, 

81, 82. 
Lincolnshire, 98. 
Lockhart, 16. 
Locksley Hall, 96, 97, 

100, loi, 103. 
London, Jack, i 29. 
London Magazine, 43. 
Lord Ormont and His 

Aminta, 122. 
Lotus Eaters, The, 99. 
Lovel, the Widower, 60. 
Lucy, 1 19, 120. 
Lyrical Poems of Robert 

Browning, by Dr. A. J. 

George, 112. 

Macaulay, Thomas Bab- 

ington, 3 to 1 1, 20. 
Malory *s Chronicle, 104. 



Manchester Grammar 
School, 34. 

Mandalay^ I49» 

Manfred, 98. 

Man Who Was, The, 1 46 . 

Man Who Would be King, 
The, 146. 

Margaret Ogilvie, 39. 

Marion Evans, 79. 

Markheim, 124, 129. 

Marmion, i 5. 

Marty South, 136, 137. 

Mason's Song, 26. 

Maud, 97, 100. 

Mayor of Casterbridge, 
The, 136. 

McAndrew' s Hymn, 1 49. 

Melbourne, Lord, i 20. 

Men and Women, 108. 

Meredith, George,xii, 1 1 5 
to 123, 124. 

Micah Clarke, 12. 

Middle Ages, The, 99. 

Middlemarch, 79, 82, 85. 

Millais, 92. 

Miller, Henry, in The On- 
ly Way, 53. 

Mill on the Floss, The, 
-id, 82, 84. 

Milnes, 99. 

Milton, 9, 107. 

Mitchell, 130. 

Modern Painters, 87, 91, 

93- 
Monckton, 99. 



[169] 



Index 



Monte Cristo, 1 2. 


One Word More, 108, 


Moravian School, 118. 


III, 113. 


Morning Post, London, 


Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 


118. 


The, 115, 119. 


Morte d' Arthur, 100. 


Our Mutual Friend, 54. 


Mowglie, 148. 


Oxford, 90. 


Mrs. Battle's Opinion on 




Whist, 41, 45. 


Palace of Art, The, 99. 


Mulvaney, the Irishman, 


Past and Present, 22, 26, 


147. 


27. 


Murder As One of the 


Paracelsus, 109. 


Fine Arts, 31, 35. 


Parsifal, 107. 


My Star, 113. 


Pauline, 109. 


Mystery of Edwin Drood, 


Pavilion on the Links, The, 


The, 50. 


129. 




Payn, James, 17. 


Napoleon of Rhyme, 109. 


Peel, Sir Robert, 120. 


Naulakha, The, 148. 


Pendennis, 60, 64. 


New Arabian Nights, 


Pew, 125, 128. 


126. 


Pickwick Papers, 50, 52. 


Newcomes, The, 60. 


Pied Piper of Hamelin, 


Newdigate Prize, 91. 


The, 108. 


Niagara Falls, 139. 


Pilgrim's Progress, 79. 


Nicholas Nickleby, 50, 54. 


Pilgrim's Scrip, 119. 


Nobel Prize, 146. 


Pippa Passes, 108, 109, 


Norton, Caroline, i 20. 


113, 114. 




Phelps, Prof. William Ly- 


Ode on the Death of the 


on, 115, 116, 134. 


Duke of Wellington, 


Plain Tales from the Hills, 


105. 


145. 


Old Curiosity Shop, 50. 


Poems by Two Brothers, 


Old Mortality, i 8. 


99. 


Oliver Twist, 50. 


Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 


Lyric Love, 108, 1 1 1, 


99. 


114. 


Preterita, 92, 94. 


;i7o; 





Index 



Princess, The, loo, 105, 

114. 
Professor, The, 7 1 . 
Prospice, 108, 1 1 1, 113. 
Puck of Pock's Hill, 141. 
Pulvis et Umbra, 130. 
Punch, 59. 

Queen Mary, loi. 
Queen Viftoria, 104. 
QuentinDurward, 17,18. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra, 113. 
Rasselas, 79. 
Recessional, 149. 
Red Cotton Nightcap 

Country, 1 1 1 . 
Reid, Mayne, 90. 
Return of the Native, The, 

132, 133, 136, 138. 
Rhoda Fleming, 121. 
Rhone below Geneva, 

94. 
Richardson, 62. 
Richard the Lion-Hearted, 

17. 
Ring and the Book, The, 

97, 106, 113. 
Robinson Crusoe, 125. 
Rob Roy, 18. 
Romola, 77, 82, 85. 
Rose La Touche, 92. 
Rottingdean, 145. 
Ruskin, John, xii, 1 7, 30, 

87 to 95. 



Sad Adventures of the Rev. 

Amos Barton, The, 8 1 . 
Sandra Belloni, 121. 
Sands, George, 74. 
San Marco, III. 
Sartor Resartus, 21, 23, 

28. 
Scenes From Clerical Life, 

81. 
School of Scandal, The, 

120. 
Scotch Moors, 127, 
Scotch Scenes, 127. 
Scotch Stories, 128. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 1 1 to 

19,47, 52, 90, 128. 
Sea Wolf, The, 129. 
Seigfried, Wagner's, 107. 
Sellwood, Miss Emily, 

100. 
Sesame and Lilies, 94. 
Seven Lamps, The, 87, 

92»93- 
Seymour, 50. 
Shakespeare, 47, 106, 

1 14, 120. 
Shaving of Shagpat, The, 

118. 
Shelley, 109. 
Sheridan, 120. 
Shibli Bagarag, 119. 
Shirley, 74. 

Sicilian vengeance, i 29. 
Sidney, 104. 
Silas Marner, 82, 84. 



[171] 



Index 



Sir Austin, 119. 

Sire de Maletroit*s Door, 
The, 124, 129. 

Sketches by Boz, 50. 

Soldiers Three, 147. 

Somoa, 127. 

Sonnets From the Portu- 
guese, 1 10. 

Sordello, 106, 109. 

Southey, 43. 

South Sea Islands, 127. 

Spectator, 58. 

Spedding, 99. 

Spencer, Herbert, 81, 83. 

Steele, 58. 

Stevenson, XII, 11, 39,40, 
72, 120, 123 to 130. 

Stones of Venice, The, 
87, 92, 94, 95. 

Story of an African Farm, 
The, 116. 

Strafford, 109. 

Strauss— Life of Jesus, 80. 

Study of Sociology, The, 

83. 
Supernatural Man, The,45 

Suspira, 36. 

Swift, 3. 

Taine, 103. 

Tales From Shakespeare, 

43- 
Tales of East India Life, 

140. 
Talisman, The, 18. 



Talk and Talkers, 130. 

Tennyson, Alfred, xii, 96 
to 106, 113, 114. 

Tennyson, Charles, 99. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 
65, 132, 134, 136, 
138. 

Thackeray, William Make- 
peace, xii, XIV, 13, 48, 
52, 56 to 66, 73, 99. 

They, 148. 

Thompson-Seton, 148. 

Three Guardsmen, The, 
12. 

Three Ladies of Sorrow, 3 7 

Timbuftoo, 99. 

Times, London, 21,1 20. 

Tolstoi, 13. 

To Mary in Heaven, 113. 

Travels With a Donkey, 
126. 

Treasure Island, i 23, i 24, 
126, 128. 

Trench, 99. 

Trevelyan, G. O., 5. 

Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, 99. 

TurgenefF, 13. 

Turner, 91, 94. 

Two Voices, The, 100. 

Ulysses, 100. 

Under the Greenwood 

Tree, 135. 
Unto This Last, 94. 



[172] 



Index 



Vanity Fair, ^6, 58, 59, 

63- 

Viftorian Age, 96. 
Villette, 66, 73. 
Villon, 129. 
Virginians, The, 60. 
Virginibus Puerisque, 40. 
Vision of Sudden Death, 
The, 31. 

Waverley, 15, 19, 149. 
Weir of Hermiston, 127. 
Westminster Review, 80. 
Wessex, 133. 



Westward Ho, 142. 
Weyman, 12. 
White Company,The, 1 2. 
Wilhelm Meister, 23. 
William the Conqueror, 

147. 
Without Benefit of Clergy, 

146. 
With the Night Mail, 1 48. 
Woodlanders, The, 136, 

137- 
Wordsworth, 35, 113. 
Wuthering Heights, 67, 

71. 



[173] 



Here Ends Modern English Books of 
Power, Being a Second Series of Essays 
on Great Books and Their Writers 
BY George Hamlin Fitch. Published 
BY Paul Elder ^ Company at Their 
ToMOYE Press in the City of San Fran- 
cisco AND Seen Through the Press by 
John Bernhardt Swart in the Month 
of February and the Year Nineteen 
Hundred and Twelve 



J 91 2 



